










































LIFE, LAW, AND LITERATURE; 


ESSAYS OX VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 









LIFE, LAW, AND LITERATURE; 


ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 


15Y 

WILLIAM G. T. BARTER, ESQ. 

BARRISTER-AT-LAW. 





LONDON: 


BELL AND DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET. 


1863. 

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PREFACE. 

FIAT’S in a name?” If there be 
truth at the bottom of this query, a 
writer should not be too strictly chal¬ 
lenged in christening his book. A 
name to call it by will suffice, as with ourselves, 
who rarely rejoice in characteristic appellatives. 
Messrs. Black, White, and Smith, are sufficiently 
so designated, although the first be fair, the second 
swarthy, and the last a weakling, whose white 
hand could have forged nothing stronger than a 
cheque. 

The present volume, it is hoped, however, will 
sufficiently connect with its title ; for it has some¬ 
thing on life and conduct, three papers on law, and 
a great ^ ea } about literature. The first of the 
following essays, originally delivered as a lecture, 
retains the phraseology, which it was thought in- 








VI 


Preface. 

expedient to alter. The next six papers appeared in 
a monthly serial, and the eighth in an annual, and 
under the signature, T. E. Cour, an anagram of the 
author’s surname in Spanish. For reasons that 
concern but himself, he will use this signature 
no more, and has indulged a whim in inserting 
here what he has written under it. 

Kentish Town, 

June, 1863. 



* 



CONTENTS. 


Essay Page 

I. Ancient and Modern Poetry. 1 

ii. Periodical Literature.38 

in. Colonies and Commerce. 41 


iv. Omens, and an Ominous Announcement .... 51 

v. Marriage with Deceased Wife’s Sister . 55 

vi. On the Homeric Poems.63 

vii. On the Extension of the County Courts’ Jurisdic¬ 


tion . ...... 73 

viii. A Steamboat Parley about Chess.94 

ix. War not Unchristian.108 

x. Proverbs and their Teaching.117 

xi. Hexameters. 118 

xii. On Language-learning.122 

Xiii. On Language-learning ( continued ).126 

xiv. Horace and his Translators.136 

xv. False Grounds for Obvious Duties.139 

xvi. On Learning Modern Languages, and when to begin. 141 

xvii. On Pindar and the so-called Pindaric.146 

xviii. Knowledge not Privilege.150 

xix. On Punning.152 

xx. Blank Verse and Literal Translation » . . . . 156 

xxi. On Music in Education. 157 

xxii. Body and Soul. ...160 

xxiii. On Fugitive Pieces.162 

xxiv. On Beading and Study.169 

xxv. Error and Self-deception.177 




























LIFE, LAW, AND LITERATURE; 

ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 

I. 

ANCIENT AND MODERN POETRY. 

F we consider the occupations of the bulk of 
mankind in their waking moments, they 
may he conveniently divided into what men 
must do, what they ought to do, and what, 
falling under neither of these heads, may be 
designated as what they may do. What they must do 
regards chiefly the physical necessities of our nature, and 
with the bulk of mankind is their daily concernment, viz., 
to provide shelter, food, and raiment for them and theirs. 
The second is equally a necessity in the long run; but, 
regarding our moral more than our physical wants, may be 
more neglected by individuals, and with seeming impunity 
for a time; hut more or less observed it must be^ by the 
race, or things would even here fall to fearful confusion. 
I allude to what regards the relation of man to his Creator, 
and of man to his neighbour. The third class embraces 

B 







2 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

such occupation as does not of necessity fall under the 
above heads, nor does it necessarily contravene or infringe 
upon them. 

All classification of man and his doings is open to the 
objection of the divisions running into one another; but 
for our present purpose it will be sufficiently accurate to 
divide men’s occupations into business, duty, and recrea¬ 
tion. Under the last of these divisions we may rank the 
subject of the present Lecture; and, in so ranking Poetry 
as a recreation, I hope to escape giving umbrage to any 
enthusiastic votary of an art for which my admiration is 
not less, though haply resting on different grounds. And 
for the reluctance any one may have to contemplate 
Poetry as a bare recreation, I share it with him to the full, 
and only rank it as such because of the difficulty of con¬ 
tending, to the satisfaction of many, that it is either men’s 
business, or their duty, to make poetry, or to read it. 

We shall, however, shrink the less from contemplating 
Poetry as a recreation, if we consider the vast functions 
and importance of recreation—important in its effects 
upon the character whether of child or man—important 
as frustrating many a notable scheme of education, which, 
sedulously and jealously guarding every avenue on what 
may be called the busy side of our nature, has unaccount¬ 
ably left this, the idle side, open, through which, however, 
influences are continually pouring that neutralize the pain¬ 
ful endeavours bestowed in other quarters. And no 
wonder: for if the influences to which the young are open 
be rightly estimated, we shall scarcely fail to assign a very 
high, if not the highest, place to that which they exercise 
on one another; an influence of force to baffle every 
scheme of education that fails to harmonize with it—that 
fails, in fine, to make it a channel for its own teaching. 
And never is this formidable influence more actively at 
work than in what we are apt to call recreation, but which. 


3 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

from the ardour they carry into it, is manifestly an earnest 
business with the young’. 

Nor is this the sole point in which recreation has a 
serious aspect. I know not how it may have happened 
with you, but my mind has often dwelt on what appeared 
to me a tendency in our nature to reproduce ourselves 
in our amusements—to carry the earnestness of serious 
occupation into that which we fly to as a relaxation from 
the serious. Nay, I am inclined to think that, if all our 
sports and pastimes could be traced to their original, they 
would be ultimately found but so many imitations or pic¬ 
tures of serious life at the period of their invention. The 
sportsman of to-day does for amusement what the hunter 
of old, and the Indian of our times, prosecutes as a means 
of life. The war-dance of the savage nations is but a 
picture of actual warfare previously waged by the dancers. 
Chess again is a mimic battle, and in its original institu¬ 
tion was even more so; the very names of the pieces 
having in the old Sanscrit, as we are informed, a reference 
to the distribution of an armv, with the monarch at its 
head—what we call the queen being in the Oriental game 
the vizier of the king, who in those countries is at once 
his minister and his general. Perhaps every game, if 
we could trace it, would be found in its origin to have 
reference to actual occupation. We see the tendency in 
children. The boy plays at horses or at soldiers, and the 
little girl dresses her doll, in obvious imitation of the 
serious occupations of adult life, which they see going on 
around them. 

This tendency to reproduce our earnest life in our 
recreations is, then, a common instinct of our nature, and 
will prepare us for finding Poetry to be equally connected 
with man’s serious life; nay, its fundamental interest 
originally lay but in that; for however we may be content 
for a moment to look at Poesy on its recreative side, we 


4 Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

do it wrong to stop at that. Poetry is not a mere amuse¬ 
ment, a trifle, a toy to while away an idle hour. It is 
nothing at all, or it is infinitely above this. It is an 
earnest thing, and the poet is little aware of his office, or 
his hearers of his teaching, if its solemn drift be no better 
understood. Of its intimate connection with our nature 
who can doubt ? Wherever is man, there poetry is also. 
Prom the earliest ages and rudest state of society, to the 
highest cultivation and latest times, we everywhere find it, 
or an endeavouring after it. It is,, indeed, a true thing, 
and must have truth for its basis, however admitting fiction 
in its form : not individual truth, but specific truth, like 
the artist’s tree in the landscape, which is not individually 
true, as not being the portrait of any particular tree, but 
specifically true, as adhering to the external appearance of 
that class of trees. Such being its connection with truth, 
its proper mission is, like that, to elevate and improve. 
Whatever has a contrary tendency, is false poetry, and 
however it may exhibit flashes of something better, it is 
but the faded resemblance of a fallen spirit to its former 
state. 

And as his office, so is the Poet. To form him much is 
necessary—the constant and active exertion of his faculties. 
The whole of Nature, with man and his relations, form the 
field of his working, and, like the lens, the poet collects 
the rays of truth and beauty that are scattered through the 
atmosphere of life, and makes them converge in one burning 
focus on the soul. The rays, however, are there; he creates 
them not, hut only gathers them to a point. His sympa¬ 
thies are universal. Nothing is above, and nothing beneath 
him. The high and the low, the uncomely no less than 
the beautiful, minister to his creative power, and that 
spirit of order within him which sees that the unseemly 
oftentimes is but the misplaced, and corrects it, not by 
destroying or avoiding, but by restoring it to where it 


5 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

belongs. His teaching is universal, and universal also are 
the fountains of his knowledge ; anywhere and everywhere 
he finds it in all things: for that man is indeed no true 
lover of wisdom who is above deriving it from any source, 
however humble. The philosopher who is deserving of the 
name, feels that the ground on which he stands, that patch 
of the known, is but a speck to the boundless unknown 
that stretches on all sides around him. The poet is 
accordingly above such scruples, and 

“ Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything 

for not only can he read in the clear eyes of childhood a 
wisdom beyond what the little one is conscious of, touching 
the possibilities of a glorious future, but in the maturer 
form of degraded manhood—living dungeon oftentimes in 
which the imprisoned soul lies under a load—the poet can 
touch a chord which reaches the captive in the depths of 
liis moral captivity, and leads to his final disenthralment; 
even as the minstrel Blondel, harp in hand, discovered his 
royal master by a music whose familiar utterance found 
response from within the thick walls of the Austrian 
fastness. 

Poetry, then, is an earnest thing; and the further we 
trace it back to its original, the more earnestly we find it 
was regarded, up to those early times in the history of 
every nation when the rates, prophet, and bard are one 
and the same. Yes, my friends; however strange it may 
* appear to us, it is not the less true, that in remote times 
all serious language, roundly speaking, took the form of 
poetry. Poetry was before prose—not, of course, as a 
medium of ordinary communication, but as the language of 
composition. Their religion, their laws, their attempts at 
perpetuating the memory of past events, and such know¬ 
ledge as they had of the phenomena of nature, all assumed 
the metrical form. Poetry we see, therefore, so far from 





6 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

being a trivial matter, or a bare recreation, to be resumed 
or rejected at pleasure, was bound up with all that empha¬ 
tically raises man above the brutes of the field, however 
sagacious—raises him to that threefold elevation, which 
specially differences instinct from reason, viz., religion, the 
social relations, and the accumulated experience of our 
race, whether as history or science. 

If such, then, are its relations to man, we shall be pre¬ 
pared to find that poetry is, what I believe it, a picture of 
man’s life in all its varied phases; and consequently that 
Ancient and Modern Poetry, the subject of the present 
Lecture, if out of its many aspects we regard it in this 
point of view, will be found to differ or agree precisely 
as life in ancient times differed from that in modern 
times, or agreed with it; differing, in fine, as nation 
differs from nation, and one time from another, and agree¬ 
ing only so far as our common nature is the same in 
them all. 

But, even so narrowed, it will not be expected of me on 
this occasion to adequately handle so copious a subject, and 
one that might occupy several lectures without exhausting 
its fulness; and I shall therefore content myself with 
applying this principle of the life-picturing property of 
poetry to the matter before us, and that too of necessity in 
a somewhat desultory manner—here a thought and there 
a thought, as occasions occur, without always filling up the 
interval between them in a way one might with a less 
extensive theme. But those of you who may be familiar 
with this kind of contemplation will of yourselves fill up 
the gaps, and those to whom the topic is new, may be led 
to think for themselves on a subject upon which no amount 
of deep thinking will be ill-bestowed. In either alterna¬ 
tive, therefore, I shall endeavour to flatter myself with the 
hope that such attention as you may favour me with on 
this occasion will not be thrown away. 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 7 

Poetry, then, mirrors man in his manifold life. In 
early poetry, each poem had that character in a greater 
degree, i.e. reflected a larger proportion of the less com¬ 
plex life of early times; while in modern, the picture of 
society which poetry yields us must be gathered from 
the whole, as a body of which each part yields its frag¬ 
ment. And this reference to the different life of different 
periods will furnish the true key to the difference of the 
poetry which reflects it. When man’s life is all action, 
then poetry will turn on action; but when the contem¬ 
plative grows into a serious element of social occupation, 
then must poetry embrace this also: and then action 
ceases to be the sole type of the poetic, and Wordsworth’s 
Excursion takes its legitimate place in the poetic field. 

Those, therefore, who disparage poetry that has not 
some great action for its subject, are rather influenced by 
the beauty of those great poems, emphatically poems of 
action, the Epic and the Drama of antiquity, than guided 
by a just consideration of the requirements of poetry 
itself; and by fixing the poet too sternly to the higher 
functions of his art, they would cripple the fair propor¬ 
tions of the art itself, which should grow with the race, 
and work its wonders in every department of our life and 
nature, the spiritual and contemplative least of all ex¬ 
cepted. 

In the early stages of society, indeed, the external 
would be the principal feature. But this was a necessity 
not of the art itself, but one which grew out of the rela¬ 
tions of the poet to his audience, which were fixed and 
infrangible for him and them, but which need not and 
ought not therefore to fetter a subsequent age. Each 
age, indeed, has its own atmosphere in that respect, and 
the poet cannot be indefinitely above his contemporaries. 
A Shakespeare would have been impossible in the days of 
Chaucer. Dante harmonized with the age in which he 



8 Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

wrote, equally as Homer with his. A poet might as well 
be expected to compose in a foreign tongue, as to write 
without reference to the requirements of his audience. 
Their knowledge and sympathy constitute the circle within 
which he works. And it cannot be otherwise ; for the 
function of poetry is to teach and move men through the 
medium of their passions, feelings, and experience. In 
order to have any hold on them it must interest, and none 
can interest that fails to answer these conditions. Hence, 
of the different kinds of poetry, all are not calculated to 
affect all men, nor in all ages. Every popular poem has 
answered these requisites, and has only ceased to be 
popular when it has over-lived the state of society to 
which it was cognate. 

The power of poetry to interest the reader lies in its 
dealing with his sympathies, knowledge, and experience. 
The best poetry will fail with him if it fail in this, and the 
worst doggerel may, for the nonce, perform the functions 
of spirit-stirring minstrelsy if it he lucky enough to fall 
in with these. This is the secret of the unction with 
which you may sometimes hear religious persons dwell on 
very miserable doggerel on sacred subjects. It is the 
nobleness of the theme, involving as it does the highest 
interests of humanity, that throws a mantle over the 
poverty of the performance; their favourable reception of 
which is not, however, to be taken as the measure of their 
capacity for appreciating a higher order of composition. 
The truth is, that the verses deal, though clumsily, with 
ideas familiar and dear to them, and on which their souls 
dwell with delight. It is a rude hand and uncouth, that, 
nevertheless, unlocks a well-spring whence freely flow 
the ever-gushing waters of the heart—a discord which 
their souls, out of their own music, resolve into harmony. 
A lover falls into ecstasy at the sight, it may be, of an old 
glove, that is associated with a host of memories. He 


9 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

hugs it to his heart, and carefully and reverentially hives 
it among his precious things. But do not, I pray you, as 
you would avoid error, gauge his skill in glovery, by his 
liking for this individual specimen. So with the poorer 
specimens of poetry of this kind, that yet obtain high 
favour—their value consists, not in what they are, but in 
what they suggest. 

We easily see, therefore, how the relation of the poet to 
his audience must in all ages have influenced the cast of 
poetry. In ancient times, when books were not, the poet 
was obliged to address audiences, assembled persons ; col¬ 
lective applause therefore was the necessary object of his 
effort—individual appreciation could be of no account. 
There could be but little closet-reading when books were 
too rare and costly, and the faculty of perusal too rare 
also, to be generally available. 

The ancient poet, therefore, found himself compelled to 
write what would be pleasing to all. He might not, like 
Milton, be content so he could “ fit audience find though 
few.” The poetry would therefore have broader features, 
be bolder in its outline, and not go into those minuter 
touches, which close and individual observation reveals to 
a few, but keep to that which would be cognizable of all. 
The poetry, therefore, would be objective, as it is termed, 
rather than subjective; that is, things would be por¬ 
trayed as they had a tendency to strike the generality, 
rather than invested with attributes existing only in the 
poet’s own mind, or resulting from his peculiar manner of 
thinking. Both classes of poetry exist in modern times, 
but the former alone, for the reasons stated, was possible 
in the early ages. 

And this same necessity of keeping within the apprecia¬ 
tion of the audience, would give a character which marks 
all ancient poetry, viz.—that its illustrations are all drawn 
from objects familiar to his auditors, and never borrowed 


10 Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

from sources beyond their experience. And it was conse¬ 
quently characteristic of the age and country to which the 
poem belonged ; for the early poetry of all nations, and 
especially of the nations of antiquity, would be prior to 
much knowledge on their part beyond what their own 
country and manners afforded them. Their minds, accus¬ 
tomed therefore to pictures that reflected their own deeds 
and sentiments and experience, would reject any foreign 
and non-vernacular element with a repugnance, of which 
we, in modern Europe, who, from a mixed literature of 
various ages and countries, have come to tolerate, and 
even admire and revere, much that we neither feel nor 
understand, can scarcely form an adequate conception. 
Our extended knowledge, literary and geographical, favours 
the importation of exotic notions and allusions, which the 
few understand, and which the many, without under¬ 
standing, yet treat with a respect which might he withheld 
were there but one uniform tone of culture prevailing, as 
in those days. 

That most ancient of hooks, the Bible, is highly illus¬ 
trative of what we have said. The prophets drew their 
similes and types from the familiar objects around them ; 
and all the poetry of Scripture, however exalted the strain, 
is of the same character. Through the whole compass of 
it, I should suppose it would he hard to fix on a single 
allusion or simile which the meanest peasant of Palestine 
might not have understood. Indeed, an adequate exa¬ 
mination of the sacred poetry alone would go far to repro¬ 
duce to us the social condition of the Hebrews of the 
time, so much does it picture the country and people. 
Instances are innumerable. Shall I trouble you with two, 
one illustrating the geographical features of a district, the 
other the social condition of the people ? 

The first occurred to my mind while listening to the 
instructive lecture lately delivered in this room on the 


11 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

u Mountains and Valleys of Scripture; ” in the course of 
which, the Lecturer having to describe a region, spoke of 
its irregular supply of water from torrents, that were dry 
in summer and swelled to inundation in the wet season, 
fluctuating in their courses ; and took occasion to quote 
the passage from Deborah’s Song, Judges v. 21: “ The 
river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the 
river Kishon.” The text is familiar enough, but it was on 
that occasion that the significance of the epithet applied to 
the river first struck me: “ That ancient river, the river 
Kishon ”—a very strange and unmeaning epithet if applied 
to any of our waters, even to Father Thames himself; of 
whom it would sound singular to say, “ That ancient 
river, the Thames,” as antiquity can be no distinctive 
character where all the rivers, for aught we know, are 
equally ancient. But in a country like that in which the 
Kishon flows, watered by torrent streams, which, dry in 
summer, burst forth at other seasons not always in the 
same channels, a torrent river, that always kept its course, 
would be significantly marked by the epithet “ ancient.” 
And the occurrence of the epithet becomes geographically 
significant of the land to which the poetry belongs—a 
land of shifting torrents, where permanent streams are an 
exceptional feature. 

The other instance marks the social condition of the 
people ; and, although more immediately illustrative of its 
effect on their language, is sufficiently connected with 
their poetry to be mentioned here. It is the very first 
word of the Psalms: “Blessed is the man that walketh 
not in the counsel of the ungodly.” Now, the word 
“ blessed ” in the original Hebrew is from a word which 
means literally and primarily “ to walk” “ to cause to 
walk” “to direct or guide;” and, in a secondary and 
derivative sense, “ to make happy ” How came “ He 
directed ” to mean “ He made happy ?” The two mean- 



12 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

ings are different. The somewhat wide interval between 
them, however, I am inclined to think, may be supplied 
from the pastoral habits of the Hebrews, which render 
the image of the shepherd and his flock so familiar in 
their writings. National miseries are there repeatedly 
pictured as sheep scattered, without a shepherd ; and a 
happy state, as the shepherd leading his charge into fair 
and well-watered pastures. Guidance and direction there¬ 
fore became easily identified with happiness, and the want 
of them with the opposite condition : a notion which was 
moreover strengthened by the religious conviction of the 
necessity of Divine direction, and the inability of man to 
govern himself. Nor is this etymology without a real 
foundation in the philosophy of life. Guidance relied oil 
frees us, so far as it extends, from perplexity—that arch- 
troubler of ease ; and Divine guidance extending over every 
phase of human existence, the pictures of temporal feli¬ 
city, ascribed in Scripture to the godly, may be looked on 
as so many statements in detail of reliance on Providence. 
But wherefore instance these when the whole Book of 
Psalms, and indeed the Bible generally, overflows with 
proofs of the life-reflecting character of ancient poetry, 
everywhere vernacular, homely, and familiar? 

Among many a notion prevails that poetry is a thing 
apart, dealing with the remote and stately, and, rather 
than not, eschewing the stream of every-day life. This 
miserable error, which the best poetry of modern times 
emphatically refutes, though finding plausible support in the 
writings of inferior poets, found no footing at all in the 
early poetry of any people. In the early ages, when as yet 
readers of poetry were not, hut hearers chiefly, assembled 
audiences, the poets fixed their interest by themes which 
engaged the auditors, not for being stately and august, hut 
for dealing in what concerned them—for being about what 
they were, and what was done, and thought, and felt, and 


13 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

hoped, by themselves or their ancestors, and for vividly 
depicting their life and manners. The high or low was 
not balanced by them; hut the actual and true, or what 
they believed to be such, was what they looked for at the 
poet’s hands. And, like the ballad of our own land, the 
familiarity of the theme and its treatment, so far from being 
a drawback to his song, was its highest recommendation. 
And as for the desire for contemporary subjects ; at least 
that the subject being old was no recommendation to the 
ancient auditors of poetry is shown by a passage in the 
Odyssey, where Penelope, hearing the minstrel singing the 
woes of the Acliaeans, and their sufferings at Troy and on 
their return, requests him to change the theme so painful 
to her feelings, and sing some other song about other 
heroes and their deeds. Telemaclius reproves her sensi¬ 
tiveness, declaring that the bard is not to blame for his 
theme, as men always love best to hear that song of which 
the subject is most recent. 

But I feel that the subject is growing under my hands, 
and enticing me into a larger treatment of it than comports 
with our limits. Leaving therefore the rich treasures of 
Sacred Poetry for the present, and turning to the secular, 
we may observe that our knowledge of Ancient Poetry is 
confined to that of Greece and Pome. 

Ancient poetry as picturing life may be summed in 
Homer. And it is a remarkable fact, that the circle of 
Homer and the Greek Dramatists was rarely travelled out 
of during the whole subsequent period of Greek literature 
down to the destruction of Constantinople. It was but a 
cooking up of the old materials. So also with Roman 
poetry, which for the most was but an imitation and trans¬ 
lation of the Greek: Plautus may be excepted, who took 
Greek subjects indeed, but gave them a Roman handling; 
and Horace in his Satires and Epistles, which, bating the 
freedom which his times admitted, furnish some of the 





14 Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

most delightful and instructive reading in the whole 
compass of Latin verse. After him Lucan’s Pharsalia is 
the solitary exception, and, however inadequate, was yet a 
step in the right direction, inasmuch as he attempted to 
picture the manners of his age and country, and therefore 
was more Homeric than the rest, because of the contem¬ 
porary element which prevails in his poem. When I say 
contemporary I mean comparatively so, as the poet was 
almost as near to the times of Csesar and Pompey as we 
are to the wars of Marlborough; and therefore contrast¬ 
ing very favourably with Statius, for example, who, like 
Lucan, flourished in the first century of the Christian era, 
hut must needs go back to remote antiquity, and in his 
Thebais fix on a foreign subject anterior to the Iliad 
itself. 

The standstill character of the Greek poetry in its later 
periods has been ascribed to its early perfection, as if, 
having reached its height, decay was a necessary conse¬ 
quence. This has always appeared to me a very inadequate 
reason for its stagnancy. There is no standstill in our 
poetry. A Chaucer, a Shakespeare, and a Milton, have 
not hindered a Burns, a Byron, and a Wordsworth. 

What, then, are the causes of the difference ? An in¬ 
quiry into this appears to me to open so fertile a field, and 
goes so to the very bottom of what is or is not true poetry, 
that I think a few words on the subject will not be without 
interest. 

Every great social fact must have resulted from many 
causes, some of them perhaps inscrutable, but which rally 
round and are ancillary to the more prominent ones, all 
concurring to one result. The leading causes, therefore, 
can alone be indicated. Among these causes in the present 
case, I perceive two. The first is that, which has dead¬ 
locked art in all countries in every department, viz., ex¬ 
cessive admiration of the first master-piece in that art, and 


15 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

a consequent tendency to make that master-piece the prison 
of the art—to tie all future possibilities within the compass 
of the first production, which thereby became a boundary 
and a stumbling-block, instead of a starting-point and an 
incentive to farther progress. It was so with the Greek 
poetry. All subsequent poets adhered too slavishly to the 
model which first fixed the affections of their countrymen ; 
and all their music consequently came to be but variations of 
the same tune. The more the nation advanced, therefore, the 
less each new poem was in harmony with the period in which 
it was written, becoming less and less a picture of the times 
as those times dropped the features of resemblance to the 
Heroic period, the stereotyped form to which every poet 
was tied. This source of injury to poetry was twofold in 
its operation. Each succeeding generation knew less and 
less of the manners the modern was tied to depict, and less 
and less was the poet, from a like ignorance, able of his 
own knowledge to paint them. Paint them he could not, 
and therefore he copied such portions as he found drawn 
to his hand in the imperishable colours of Homer’s pencil. 

The result was natural, but melancholy. The poet, with 
his eye fixed on that distant though dazzling period, was 
blind to all around him; so that, for the purposes of his 
poem, the world might as well havastood still since the siege 
of Troy. Who that reads the Argonauts of Apollonius 
Rhodius, that pale reflex of Homeric light, would conjec¬ 
ture that it was written in the days of the Ptolemies ? The 
poet ignores all that flood of history, and its influences, that 
had flowed for centuries, and through the most active 
period of Greek life ; and following the fashion of the day, 
considers his highest aim as a poet was to imitate the 
Father of Poets, in the base way of cooking up the old 
materials in the old way, instead of the real and nobler 
imitation of doing as his model had done—write about his 
own times and manners, and the manifold life everywhere 



16 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

fermenting around him, and as one, almost his contem¬ 
porary, Theocritus, had done in those sweet Idylls that 
depict common life in the Sicily of those days. 

The matter may be brought a little more home to us, if 
we picture to ourselves the result if circumstances had made 
it that our Homer, Chaucer, who faithfully depicts his own 
times, the age of Edward III. had been the model to which 
all subsequent poets of this country must conform. Sup¬ 
pose the subject to be always laid in that period, or prior 
to it, what poems think you would have been produced in 
the course of centuries as we receded farther from the time ? 
Eancy Byron, Burns, and Wordsworth, foregoing the ' 
culture of their own rich vineyards, and compelled to delve 
in the rough, rude soil, where nothing less than the con¬ 
temporary mattock of old Geoffrey himself could he em¬ 
ployed with advantage. And who knows hut we might 
have come to something like it, had the language been 
more fixed in Chaucer’s time? Eor fixity of language, 
more than anything else, has tended to stereotype poetic 
excellence to the form of the first great poem that appears 
in it. Something of the kind we meet with in the Southern 
languages of modern Europe, which were fixed long before 
ours, and in which, accordingly, we find more tendency- 4 * 
than in ours to adhere to the model of the early master¬ 
pieces. A stereotype standstill has marked them all: a 
condition to which many causes have contributed, hut no 
small share of which may he ascribed to a certain purism 
in language, and the tendency to reject provincial contri¬ 
butions. Every language does so at some stage; but that 
language will be the richest in literature and in diction 
which is the latest to close the door to that source of 
wealth. 

Another cause of that standstill character is partly also 
its effect, viz., that poetry gradually grew so inane, that 
original and stirring minds found it no element for them, 


17 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

and took to other pursuits—to politics, and history, and 
philosophy. The weaker ones, with no predominant genius 
for anything, were drawn by the force of taste and culture 
to the imitation of what they loved and admired in common 
with their countrymen. Taste and culture, however, will 
not suffice for poetry. All the grace and pure taste of an 
Addison, the genius even that could yield us a “ Sir Roger 
de Coverley,” have failed to throw life into his “ Cam¬ 
paign,” and his “ Cato.” 

Among the concurring causes of the decline of Greek 
poetry may have been that it reached its perfection at an 
early period of mental and moral culture, and so stood as 
the model for composition to later ages, although they had 
outgrown that state of culture: the Mythology, for ex¬ 
ample, which was a real belief for the Greeks of Homer’s 
time, had dwindled to a conventional nonentity, a poetic 
fashion, for those of a later day, even of Pagan Greece. 
This cause operated with increased intensity when it became 
Christian. Poetry, running in the old channels, divorced 
from everything like conviction in the minds of either poet 
or audience, became a mere toy, devoid of earnestness and 
truth, and therefore all the earnest minds eschewed it. 
For the so-called poetry of those days had scarcely more 
real affinity to the thing it imitated, than modern Christians’ 
kissing under the mistletoe has to the Druidical religious 
ceremonies in which that Christmas amenity is said to have 
originated. 

So much for Ancient Poetry, considered in itself; which 
having cursorily handled, we will now bestow a word or 
two on the aspect it bears to Modern Poetry—an interest¬ 
ing subject and of ample scope, but of the points which 
present themselves we must be content with touching on 
two : woman’s social position, and the influence of Chris¬ 
tianity. Of the first it will suffice to observe, that from 
the nature of their institutions there was too much of 


c 



18 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

separation between the sexes in ancient Greece to allow of 
that freedom of intercourse which exists with us, strength¬ 
ening the one and softening the other, to the unspeakable 
improvement of both. Socially, therefore, woman was in 
a false position, deprived of her legitimate influence on the 
other sex; for influence in that way she could exert only 
as a Sappho or an Aspasia, at the cost of an equivocal 
position with her own. 

And as for that refined love, which plays so important a 
part in our literature, it had, from the causes alluded to, 
scarcely a place in theirs. Romeo and Juliet, that’ sweet 
creation of highest poesy, the delight of the young and 
the admiration of those who have ceased to be so, would 
have been impossible in ancient times. And, indeed, 
the graceful homage to the gentler sex, and the chivalrous 
recognition of its rights, is at once the characteristic and 
ornament of the literature of modern times. Christianity, 
indeed, has fostered it, as it hath fostered every influence 
that softens and ennobles our nature ; but for its more 
favourable reception among the Western nations, we must 
also look, in some degree, to the high consideration in 
which woman has been always held by the Teutonic 
tribes. 

Rut, of all poets, Shakespeare is the one the women of 
England, nay, of every country, should especially delight 
to honour; for he of all the poets has pictured woman 
in her dignity and sweetness. For this, however, he was 
probably indebted to Spenser; nay, the sweet soul of that 
sweetest of poets may be said to have become absorbed in 
the kindred but larger spirit of the myriad-minded Shake¬ 
speare : so much has Spenser’s influence, I think, given the 
tone to the rich and varied music of his gifted successor. 
The sweetness and purity of Una seem to breathe in those 
exquisite creations of the dramatist—in Miranda and in 
Portia, in Cordelia, in Helen, Hermione, and Imogene. 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. ] 9 

But Pagan antiquity equally contrasts with modern times 
if we consider woman, not as pictured in literature, but as 
a worker in it. The false position of the sex in those days 
could produce a Sappho; i. e. a woman of impulse, im¬ 
passioned, intellectual, and conscious of surpassing genius, 
and consequently at war with the conventional arrange¬ 
ments that denied them legitimate scope — a position of 
vague unease, in this world wasted energy and dreary 
discontent, and neither faith nor hope in a future. The 
gifted woman in those days had to break with her genius 
or her duties; for, society yielding no scope for the exercise 
of her higher faculty within the sphere of womanly action, 
a Homans or a Browning was impossible. 

In illustration of the influence of Christianity, I shall 
take leave to present you with a passage from Homer, and 
contrast it, on the score of humanity, with another familiar 
to us all from Shakespeare. The passage is from the 6th 
book of the “ Iliad/’ lines 37—65 of the original, which, 
translated literally into prose, are as follows :— 

“ Menelaus captured Adrastus alive, whose horses had taken fright, 
and, coursing the plain, had dashed the chariot against a tamarisk- 
tree and snapped the pole, and scampered to the town, whither the 
rest were fleeing panic-stricken. Their master was pitched out of 
the chariot beside the wheel, headlong upon his face, in the dust. 

- Menelaus stood beside him brandishing his long spear. Adrastus 
clasped liis knees and besought him thus:—‘ Take me alive, O son 
of Atreus, and accept fit ransom. For much treasures are there at 
my wealthy father’s—brass, and gold, and well-wrought steel. Of 
these my father will give thee ransom without end, when he hears 
of my being alive in the Achasens’ ships.’ 

“ He said, and persuaded the soul of Menelaus, who would pre¬ 
sently have sent him to the swift ships, and given him to a servant 
to take thither; but Agamemnon came running up, and rebuked 
him aloud and said:—‘ 0 soft-hearted Menelaus, why art thou so 
anxious to spare men? Thou and thy house have been well done 
by, sure, of these Trojans; let none of them flee from headlong 
destruction at our hands—no, not the child the mother beareth in 
her womb; let none escape, but all of them together perish utterly 
from Trov, unburied and blotted out.’ 





20 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

“ So speaking, he changed his brother’s mind, so properly advising 
him. Menelaus thrust away the suppliant, whom Agamemnon 
straightway smote in the flank, and he fell back slain, and Agamem¬ 
non planted his heel on his chest, and drew out the beechen spear.” 
—Iliad , b. vi. 37—65. 

With the above, compare the following portion of a 
scene from the “ Merchant of Venice — 

“ Portia. Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew? 
Duke. Antonio and old Shylock, both stand forth. 

Portia. Is your name Shylock? 

Shylock. Shylock is my name. 

Portia. Of a strange nature is the suit you follow; 

Yet in such rule, that the Venetian law 
Cannot impugn you, as you do proceed. 

Portia to Antonio. Do you confess the bond? 

Antonio . I do. 

Portia. Then must the Jew be merciful. 

Shylock. On what compulsion must I ? tell me that! 

Portia. The quality of mercy is not strain’d ; 

It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath : it is twice bless’d ; 

It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes: 

’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown: 

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 

The attribute and awe of majesty, 

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; 

But mercy is above this sceptred sway, 

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 

It is an attribute to God himself; 

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s, 

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,— 

That, in the course of justice, none of us 
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; 

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy.” Merchant of Venice. 

The contrast in the spirit of the two passages is obvious, 
and the point of the comparison lies in the ancient poet’s 
expressed approval of Agamemnon’s vindictive counsel. 
Time not admitting of our pursuing the subject farther, we 
must close this portion of our Lecture. 


21 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

Having thus, however imperfectly, dealt with Ancient 
Poetry, we proceed to consider the Modern, in which our 
limits will oblige us to confine ourselves to the poetry of 
our own country, refraining from that of any other, except 
so far as it bears upon our own. 

Modern Poetry, then, in common with modern literature 
in general, is highly indebted to the Classic element, 
which, combining with its native material, has produced a 
composite superior to either. Por with all my admiration 
of the master-pieces of ancient times, and my deep sense 
of their exquisite beauty, I cannot but feel that the many- 
sided force and fervour of modern genius is far before them 
—before them for the very reason that it has incorporated 
their growth in its own. Incorporated, I say; for if you 
abstract the Classic element from modern literature, were 
it possible to extricate what is so intimately combined with 
it, you would leave it, and especially the poetry, materially 
shrunken. Modern literature, indeed, is like a fair flowing 
river, widening as it goes from a thousand tributary waters, 
but dwindling to a scanty stream as you trace it to its 
source. For we are inheritors of the old, and our wealth 
is by so much the more varied as well as abundant. All 
poetry of any worth, has directly or ultimately appealed to 
the popular heart for its sanction, and is alone a living thing 
by force of it. Modern poetry, by the aid of printing, has 
possessed that privilege throughout its course; while in 
ancient the appeal to assembled audiences, the then sole 
access to the popular mind, soon gave way to manuscript 
circulation among the so-called learned, where the atmo¬ 
sphere grew critical and conventional, unfavourable to free 
thought, and destitute of those elements without which it 
were impossible for poetry to thrive. Culture, like every 
good in this world, hath its darker side. The besetting 
sin of culture is to stereotype its own defects, to run into 
the conventional, and close the door against all influences, 


22 Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

however healthy, that present themselves without the 
“open-sesame” passport of resemblance to what is within. 
To put a strong case. What would have become even of 
Shakespeare had he circulated by manuscript only, and been 
left to the tender mercies of the polite world, all through 
that dreary period from the Restoration down to what we 
may well call the revival of poetry in these parts, as 
directly leading to it, the publication of the Percy Ballads ? 
The popular heart has borne him through, from his con¬ 
tinuing to appeal to it in print. But in ancient times 
it was not so. Unjust neglect there was no recovering 
from, when the book was the manuscript, costly and rare 
as the faculty of perusal; and therefore, when the custom 
of recitation before assembled audiences of the people died 
away, poetry ceased to appeal to the popular heart. And 
this has operated to throw the later productions of those 
times under the dominion of cramping convention, and a 
criticism, to say the least, one-sided, and capable of seeing 
only through the glass of its own prepossessions ; and 
therefore the literature, from being free and spontaneous, 
beyond any other in its golden period, so quickly came to 
run in a groove; for, rightly considered, the sphere of its 
original action was limited, as compared to the long, lan¬ 
guid, and protracted career of imitation, in which latter 
class I am bold enough to rank the greater part of Latin 
poetry; for, roundly speaking, it was but an imitation of 
the Greek, with less of original character in that depart¬ 
ment than almost any other literature. 

Contrasted therefore with modern poetry, the ancient 
will, in my mind, be found inferior; for the latter is a 
growing one throughout its course, while the former, after 
a brilliant beginning, soon came to a standstill. Calling 
over the claims of ancient poetry, in order to compare them 
with the modern, I see on the one side Homer and the 
Greek Dramatists in the palmiest days of Greece, and one 


23 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

who flourished long after, hut with the same spirit, Theo¬ 
critus, to represent the Greeks, and Plautus, perhaps, for 
the Latins. Against which see what modern Europe can 
bring into the field : Chaucer, the father of our poetry, in 
whom the English heart speaks out in all the freshness of 
nature; Spenser, sweetest of bards, whose “ Faery Queen” 
is a vast forest, where many a poet hath exercised the 
privilege of lop-and-top with thankfulness and delight; 
Shakespeare, the many-sided, the all-pervading, who in his 
sole person hath summed the capabilities of the race, and 
stands out before the ages the foremost man indeed of all 
this world; Milton, the Homer of England, whom the 
spirits of ancient and modern times would seem to have 
chosen as the type of their union, and who, with the 
fervour of a Hebrew prophet, hath poured forth a song 
which will cease not till time shall be no more. High 
champions these, hut who not the less joyfully welcome to 
their side the Shakespeare of Scotland, the gifted Burns. 
To this array from our own land, call we the Florentine 
from Italy, the coequal of Homer and Shakespeare, im¬ 
mortal Dante; and Goethe and Schiller from Germany, 
and that poet-philosopher and foremost of his countrymen, 
the incomparable Moliere, from France. 

In speaking, however, of modern poetry, there is one 
feature which especially distinguishes it from the literature 
of ancient Greece, and even of Borne, where all the mind 
of the known civilized world, without reference to country, 
had to express itself in one of two languages which were 
native, but to a very small portion. The homogeneous 
character of those tongues required the Spaniard and the 
Gaul, the African and Arab, who composed in them, 
to leave his nationality and early associations behind him, 
and write as if he were a Boman or a Greek: a problem 
this which increased in difficulty as the Empire increased 
in extent, and may have been among the causes of the 




24 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

ultimate stagnancy of its literature—a literature which, by 
the conditions of its existence, was precluded from strange 
food, although its own had failed. It could not be native ; 
it would not be foreign; and therefore it died. 

But modern literature is remarkable for the abundance 
of foreign element which it contains: first, the Classics, 
which it has absorbed, and which, however latent, every¬ 
where pervades it; and next, the confluence of ideas arising 
from the intercourse of the various tribes that broke in 
upon the Boman Empire, each bringing their language, 
customs, and legendary lore, and casting them, as it were, 
into one common crucible, the old civilization, before them, 
and working up the mixed material into various shapes and 
forms, again and again remelting and recasting, until at 
length out of the confusion have emerged the tongues and 
literature of modern civilized Europe. 

One beautiful result, involving a host of pregnant con¬ 
sequences, was this, that, after so many centuries of cruel 
exclusion, it was at length permitted the poet to write in 
his own tongue—in the language he had learned from his 
mother’s lips, and in which the joys, and hopes, and wants 
of his childhood were expressed. In a word, the poet and 
his language were left undisturbed in their intimacy. 
Such, however, is prejudice, that the privilege was timidly 
and late resorted to ; and in Southern Europe the great 
poets even, as Dante and Petrarch, felt themselves called 
on to apologize for their doings in the vulgar tongue, the 
beautiful idiom which embalms the Sonnets and the Corn- 
media, and deprecatingly appeal to what they had done in 
the august language of ancient Home, the Latin—the 
dead-alive medium of the learned of their time ; in which, 
however, we of this day could well wish those poets had 
never penned a line, but that the volumes wasted on it had 
been added to the Italian. 

Out of Italy, however, the advantage to the poet of his 


25 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

native tongue was not without its drawbacks, amid the 
conflicting dialects of Western Europe. For the poet’s 
reputation, and the permanency of the creations of his 
genius, they must be embalmed in a music that will last. 
The language in which he writes must have reached a 
certain pitch of refinement, or rather of permanency. For 
note what is meant by refinement of language. Every 
people has a language adequate to the expression of their 
wants, and therefore fit medium for the poet’s picturing 
the life of that people. It is the transition-state of a 
language that hears hard upon a poet, when different 
races settle down together. The common medium of 
communication will be long ere it become a sufficiently 
permanent one for the poetic expression of the day to pass 
to posterity. A poet horn in the transition-state will he 
obsolete to his countrymen of a later day. This is a fate 
from which no qualification of the poet can shield him. 
It was therefore fortunate for Shakespeare, and an unspeak¬ 
able stroke of good fortune for us and for mankind, that he 
fell upon a period sufficiently late to avoid the catastrophe. 
The language had become fixed before him. Many authors 
had written in it. lie found the instrument, and had but 
to tune it to the exquisite expression of his own genius. 

While we are upon this topic, I cannot pass over in 
silence the vast effect of the translation of the Bible, not 
only in making its truths a popular possession, and pouring 
into our beautiful tongue the rich treasures of Hebrew 
thought and poesy, at the precise period when it was alone 
capable of receiving and incorporating them, hut also for 
its agency in the preservation of the language itself in all 
its elastic freshness. 

Other tongues have languished from the lack of this 
quickening influence. The intellectual condition of the 
southern countries of Europe might have been very dif¬ 
ferent, and their poetic capacities higher, the standstill 


26 Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

character that has grown over their poetry avoided, had 
they secured, by an early and popularly accepted verna¬ 
cular version of the Scriptures, all the intellectual, and 
literary wealth, that has been poured thence into the 
tongues of Germany and England. 

Both translations have equally influenced the language 
of their respective countries ; but the results of Luther’s 
version more immediately illustrate the connexion between 
the state of a language and the reputation of the poet 
who writes in it. Germany, though possessing a language 
highly homogeneous, as much so as that of ancient Greece 
itself, yet, like that, has various dialects, which prevail 
locally, and in which, as in Greece, works of high poetic 
merit have appeared. But, unlike the Greek, instead of 
a common tongue existing simultaneously with the sub¬ 
dialects on an equal literary footing, in Germany, through 
Luther’s translation of the Scriptures into the dialect of 
his part, and the study of his version through the length 
and breadth of the land, that dialect, the High German, 
has become the language of literature in that country, and 
the medium of polite intercourse, to the exclusion of the 
other dialects, some of which were previously of more 
extensive prevalence, as the language of literature even, 
and still prevail as the medium of oral communication in 
the districts, as of old. 

The poetic treasures of those dialects illustrate the peril 
of the poet who writes in a tongue that has not obtained 
the mastery, or has failed to preserve it. Among the dia¬ 
lect pieces that have obtained European reputation, besides 
the “ Helden Bucli ’’ and “ Nibelungen-Lied,” may be in¬ 
stanced the “Reineke de Vos,” which has been rendered into 
every language in Europe, and “ De Arme Heinrich,” or 
Henry the Leper, a poem of uncommon sweetness, on which 
Mr. Longfellow’s “ Golden Legend ” is founded. But the 
drawback of comparative neglect of the local dialects is of 


27 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

no account compared with the immense impulse given to 
German mind, by the Scripture in that noble version 
becoming a household possession of the people. 

But to return to ourselves. Inestimable are the advan¬ 
tages our version has bestowed on the people of England; 
for, over and above the rest, I verily believe that we owe 
to it the preservation of that precious heir-loom, our own 
beautiful language, in its robust and healthy condition. 
But for it, and its dispersion among us through the length 
and breadth of the land, stamping a dignity on our tongue 
that comes home to the meanest, and is felt by the highest 
•—but for this, I repeat it, our language might have vola¬ 
tilized into something very slender and thin, under the 
foreign influences brought to bear upon it at the Restora¬ 
tion. 

Foreign influences, indeed, when they do but swell the 
stream of native thought, and mar not its clearness, are 
beneficial if sparingly received; but if they tend to turn 
it, or obstruct its course, then are they disastrous in the 
extreme. They spoil what we have, and yield us nothing 
in its room; for the thing they offer is divorced from all 
that made it of value at home. 

Such wholesale substitution threatened us at the epoch 
alluded to. Our literature, risum teneatis, amici, was sought 
to be assimilated to that of the French in the age of 
Louis XIV. It has been usual with French writers to 
point to the age of Louis XIV. as the golden era of their 
literature; but I confess to thinking that period to have 
been more injurious to the literary prospects of France in 
one way than beneficial in another. I believe it ruined the 
prospects of French poetry. It stimulated indeed to per¬ 
fection within its very narrow circle, but it crippled poetry 
most utterly by proscribing everything beyond. It was a 
foolish attempt to confine the large and boundless atmos¬ 
phere of poetry within the walls of a palace. The attempt 


28 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

indeed was vain, but they were deplorably successful in 
creating and spreading a persuasion that it was foul 
breathing beyond its precincts. 

The injury to the language as a poetic medium was 
this, that out of the various phases of expression of which 
the older French writers show no dearth, they made Court- 
expression the sole phase— i.e. made the mode of expres¬ 
sion of an artificial class, and of one period, the sole 
expression for all classes and all periods, excluding what¬ 
ever could not force its way through that narrow medium. 
Offended poetry accordingly took flight, and left inade¬ 
quate declamation to supply her place as best it could. 

It is sorrowful to reflect on the opposition Corneille 
encountered on the publication of his “ Cid; ” a bold attempt 
at breaking through the net that was closing round the 
language and poetry of his country. His poem suc¬ 
ceeded : but the vis inertice of the opponents of that sort of 
thing prevailed in the end. It was enough to compose 
tragedies without having to do battle at every publication : 
that happy career was therefore abandoned. 

A second attempt was made by the brightest ornament 
of France, the incomparable Moliere, to rise into a higher 
vein, and the “ Festin de Pierre” was the result: apiece 
which, to my mind, has more true vigour, more Shake¬ 
spearian tragic force, than anything else with which I am 
acquainted in French literature. But the experiment was 
unfavourably received, and was not repeated. Had he, 
however, had a people for an audience instead of an artifi¬ 
cial Court, the centre of intrigue and cabal, against which 
the favour of the monarch could not at all times shield 
him, what might not have been the result ? His trans¬ 
cendent achievements in comedy are apt to make us not 
reflect on what else he might have done, but I confess 
that I never read the “ Festin de Pierre ” without regretting 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 29 

that the Shakespeare of France was not encouraged to work 
out the vein opened in that play. 

The artificial stamp given to their poetry during that 
period the French are only now beginning to recover 
from; and a healthier career, a recurrence to nature and 
natural sentiments—real nature, I mean, as distinguished 
from Sevres-China shepherdesses in motion—marks the 
new era. Beranger, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo in this 
respect deserve well of their countrymen, as delivering 
them from a condition into which we ourselves were at one 
period in danger of falling—how nearly falling, the poetry 
which followed the Restoration will declare; for not alone 
were the French models of that period adopted, which, 
had they been unexceptionable in themselves, were inju¬ 
rious, if only because they were foreign—because they 
did not square with the tone of thought and manners of 
this country, nay, contrasted with it yet more in our then 
insulated state, when there was less intercourse than has 
since happily grown up—but, more than this, Nature began 
to be neglected altogether, and taken at second-hand from 
the descriptions of other writers, until each successive 
copy grew less and less like the original, though bearing 
an insipid and sickly resemblance to one another, like the 
willow-pattern landscapes on our plates, that differ hut in 
the shade of the blue. 

As a favourable type of the time, I would instance 
Dryden, a strong and true poet. But he was not strong 
enough to help falling into the taste of the age, and there¬ 
fore, instead of true nature, fell into clever convention; 
and, with his undoubted genius, did all that could be done 
with clever convention. Ilis defects are most seen when 
he happens to he placed face to face with Nature, or an in¬ 
terpreter of Nature. For Nature, with his conventional 
eye, he had little sympathy, and accordingly fled from her; 
but with the interpreters of Nature he came twice in con- 


30 Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

tact—with Chaucer, the father of our poetry, that well of 
English undefiled, and with Milton. His appreciation of 
the one his “ Fables ” sufficiently declare ; and his equal 
and utter, hut all unconscious, want of sympathy with the 
other is shown in his asking the bard of “ Paradise Lost ” 
for leave to rhyme that noble epic, who gave for answer 
the contemptuous permission that he might tag his verses 
if he pleased. Again his strange relation to the inter¬ 
preters of Nature appeared in his “ Tempest,” where he 
deals in an equally hopeless manner with that sweet 
Shakesperian creation, the Miranda of the “ Tempest,” 
which appeared to him so incomplete that he must supply 
a male Miranda, and find a wife for Caliban. 

But I would not be mistaken as insensible to the merits of 
Hryden, whom, on the contrary, I admire as a noble poet; 
of whose genius, to mention no other, the u Ode on Alex¬ 
ander’s Feast ” is an imperishable monument; of the 
grandeur and beauty of which you will be all the more 
sensible if you compare it with the “ Ode on Cecilia’s Hay,” 
by his rival and imitator Pope. It is precisely because he is 
so noble a poet, that I instance him as the strongest proof 
of the pernicious influence of an artificial atmosphere. 

The artificial atmosphere went on increasing in density, 
corrupting more and more, till all Nature, for any direct 
influence on the poets of the period, had all but disap¬ 
peared. At best she had to be filtered through the 
modish and arbitrary, as regards what is within us ; and 
as to the external, she had shrunk to a sort of Banelagh 
landscape, where lamps and festoons supplied the place of 
woods, and streams, and sun, and moon, and stars. A 
dreary time was that when “ Cato ” was perfection, and 
Shakespeare was thought to need apology as an irregular 
genius, who did not want for a certain sort of merit, 
though not sufficiently careful to reduce his comely pro¬ 
proportions within the a la mode embroidered waistcoat of a 


31 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

Racine. This, however, was happily doomed to pass away. 
Thomson, with his “ Seasons,” faulty in style, and some¬ 
what cumbrous in expression, yet eminently the right thing, 
hurst upon the literary world with all the freshness of 
Nature ; and, praised by all, it was greedily read by the 
people, who recognised in the views of external Nature, 
with which it abounds, a truth and beauty, which they had 
always felt, but found not words to express. The Percy 
Ballads wrought in the same direction, as substituting 
reality for sham, and pointed to the proper field for the 
exercise of the poet’s powers—the popular heart. 

These opened the fountains, which, however, worked 
for a time in an under-current rather than openly. The 
critical awarders of fame stuck to the artificial much longer 
than we should have thought it possible, if we did not re¬ 
flect on the force of habit; and the poetasters, too, as a 
body, liked a style that made things pleasant, as the Rail¬ 
way King was wont to say of his financial strokes. They 
found the ready-made Nature, ready to their hands in the 
verses of their predecessors, much easier than original ob¬ 
servation, that entailed the trouble of thinking as well as 
the pleasure of rhyming. And thanks to Pope’s polish, 
the knack of the couplet, with its clock-work balance, was 
found to be easy to catch; so that versifying came to be 
the pleasantest pastime in the world—a kaleidoscope 
which asked no skill, but only to be turned round and 
round, when the few bits of coloured glass would of them¬ 
selves fall into fresh figures at every turn, very gay and 
agreeable. So streams of smooth, well-polished, but de¬ 
plorably empty verse kept pouring with ceaseless flow, and 
might have continued who knows how long, to the drown¬ 
ing of all thought in that department. But Cowper and 
Wordsworth and Coleridge, Byron and Shelley, and others 
their fellow-workers, have rendered that sort of thing 
henceforth impossible; and have placed the poetry of this 




32 Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

country on a footing that makes us worthy the rich heritage 
that Chaucer and Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, have 
bequeathed us—a noble heritage, which the poets of our 
day are applying in the noblest manner, not in brooding 
over, and worshipping and fearing to touch, but in using 
and augmenting in the same spirit in which those trea¬ 
sures were transmitted ; so that, like those from whom we 
derive them, we may show ourselves worthy the age and 
country we call our own, and leave our posterity an in¬ 
heritance augmented and enriched by treasures that are 
truly of our getting. I say we because all are concerned 
in this great work. The poets indeed work their wonders 
before their assembled countrymen; but we, too, their 
countrymen, albeit not poets, do our part in the reception 
we give them, in feeling their concern to be ours—that 
the true poet forwards the interests of his race, and that he 
is no friend to his kind or himself who resists, or impedes, 
what tends to ennoble our nature. 

To return, however, to the topic from which we have 
diverged, exceptions, and brilliant ones, there are, but as a 
general rule we cannot too highly value the vernacular; 
for the advantage of keeping to the themes and manners 
of one’s country, as a field on which the artist is at home, 
and therefore able to concentrate his whole strength upon 
his art, instead of diverting a large portion of his energy to 
the mere preparation of a field for its exercise is coexten¬ 
sive with the whole compass of art, whatever the province 
selected. Painter and poet are alike amenable to what is 
an eternal law, common to all. Concentrated energy 
is an indispensable element of supreme success. And 
what comparison can there be in that point between two 
persons like gifted, but the one of whom throws all his 
might, his knowledge, himself in fine, into the execution 
of some work of art, of which he has chosen as he thinks 
the subject, but to which he is in reality drawn by its 


33 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

affinity to all that is in him, and which is such in its rela¬ 
tion to him that the two mutually attract and absorb each 
other, for the time at least, until the great work is achieved 
and the mind of the artist takes tangible form in the work 
of his pencil or pen, which becomes his alter ego so far, an 
embodiment of himself? What comparison, I say, is there 
between this one, and another of like transcendent powers, 
but who, eager for distinction in some new field, leaves his 
own age and country, and their associations, which make up 
so great a part of every man, and chooses a foreign sub¬ 
ject, or one remote from the associations of his life—in 
which, therefore, he is rather hindered than helped by 
the ordinary furniture of his mind, the treasures that have 
gradually, but half unconsciously, accumulated from in¬ 
fancy through boyhood, and youth, and manhood, up to 
that moment, and for whose rich sum the ordinary and 
tangible inlets of knowledge, which we are wont to call 
education, will not sufficiently account, but which is the 
result of a thousand influences, singly inappreciable, which 
form the atmosphere in which he has lived and grown ? 
One half this man’s energy must be taken up in resisting 
their influences, so far as they fail to harmonize with the 
theme he has chosen, and in acquiring other associations 
and ideas that shall place him in harmony with it. Half 
his energy, therefore, will be taken up with preparing 
a field for its exercise; in which, when prepared, he 
will have to work with distracted force, while he has 
to stimulate his divine faculties to their work, and at the 
same time to keep them from running in their wonted 
channels of operation. Can we expect a work at all pro¬ 
portionate to the merit of the artist, and the energy ex¬ 
pended on it? 

If I have not already exceeded your patience, shall 
we bestow some thoughts on the future prospects ot 
Poetry ? 

D 





34 


Ancient ancl Modern Poetry . 

The new will always contain a large element of the old, 
and, judging by past experience, will, at any given period 
bear but a small proportion to it; so gradual will be the 
accretions, that the earlier ones will have become old before 
the incorporation of the new. For this it is that con¬ 
stitutes growth as distinguished from sudden transforma¬ 
tion, and is, in fact, the normal and healthy condition of 
us, and of all around us. - 

Whatever the future condition of Poetry, however it 
soar, it must continue to mirror our manifold life, and 
deal with things of common concernment, or it will of 
necessity transcend the sympathies of mankind, and, in 
so doing, forego its noblest aim and become a nullity. 
This leads me to touch on two classes of thinkers, whose 
views it were impossible to pass by without notice when 
Modern Poetry and its prospects are under consideration. 
The aspirations of both classes are founded on the con¬ 
ceived inadequacy of the present state of poetry to satisfy 
what they consider should be required of it; the one class 
deeming it below the relation of man to his Creator, and 
the other as below the destinies and dignity of our nature. 
The aspirations of the one are turned hopefully to the 
period when the high theme shall he the absorbing one, 
and all poetry merge in the religious. The other class, 
cribbed and cabined by the narrow circle, as they find it, 
that hounds our knowledge of the sum of things, gaze out 
wistfully, and somewhat impatiently, on the vast invisible 
and unknown, that everywhere islands us round, and look 
to poetry, and the advent of some coming poet, to enlarge 
their borders and turn the darkness into light, and win 
fresh kingdoms for the human race out of that boundless 
dark infinitude. 

Whatever enlarges the sphere of human happiness or 
human thought cannot but command our sympathy; it is, 
therefore, from no indifference to the prospects so opened 


35 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

out to us, that I confess myself not very sanguine as to 
the result. As for religious poetry, in the type sought 
for by some, it may be one of the forms of poetry, but 
never can be its sole type. It cannot be more Christian 
than the Christian himself; and with neither, in this sub¬ 
lunary world, can worship and prayer and praise be con¬ 
tinual. Poesy, like the Christian, must walk the world 
while it is in the flesh, and mix in human life—every¬ 
where, indeed, under a continual sense of the Divine 
direction and presence—but not always in the exaltation 
of its occasional moods, and still less outwardly emphasi¬ 
zing at all times what may be passing within. So that, 
while religious poetry increases, the poet need not confine 
himself to that. In religious poetry our country abounds, 
but not in religious poets, in the sense of those who write 
no other. Milton wrote much else—how exquisite and 
beautiful!—and he could write that also. Where does 
religion more purely breathe than in that affecting sonnet 
on Ills blindness ?— 

When I consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 

And that one talent, which is death to hide, 

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 
To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest He, returning, chide; 

Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ? 

I fondly ask: but Patience, to prevent 
That murmur, soon replies:—“ God doth not need 
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best 
Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best; his state 
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, 

And post o’er land and ocean without rest; 

They also serve who only stand and wait.” 

With regard to the other class, who think the art so 
much below its aspirations, I make bold to confess that it 
seems to me a fault in some modern poetry that it will not 
accept the conditions of our nature, and, therefore, sulks 




36 


Ancient and Modern Poetry . 

away the advantages we have because others are beyond 
our reach—like the Macedonian, who sighed for new 
worlds to conquer, hut, unlike him, before they have con¬ 
quered the old. But all these efforts work together for 
good ; and even where they prosper not, their very failures 
may be the elements of success to themselves or to others: 
no eminent success but it must have cost many prelimi¬ 
nary failures. It is a Divine injunction, “ Try all things, 
and hold fast by the good,” which implies much endea¬ 
vouring, and the catching of many ill things, before the 
final seizure of the good. 

But a greater fault appears to me to be the impatience 
of old forms; because the effort to avoid them leads to 
much waste of energy that might be better employed, 
and sometimes impedes success. The true poet does not 
trouble himself about forms. He has no preference for 
old or new. He knows what they are, and rates them at 
their worth. It is the reality—the substance—he seeks 
for, which he knows will always shape itself into some 
form or other, which will be the right one because it is so 
shaped; but whether a new form or an old is nothing to 
the purpose. And why so hunt after the new ? There is 
a restless go-ahead feeling, which is for fastening on 
everything. Even poetry, forsooth, must be made to 
accommodate itself to the indiscriminate craving, and fling 
off all old forms, without reference to their fitness, simply 
because we are used to them. And yet, where is the ana¬ 
logy for this impatience of old forms so long as they are 
not straitened in communicating new ideas ? In nature 
it is not so. We are obliged to content ourselves with 
old forms there. The eagle, the lion, and the cedar, 
have not changed their type since Adam’s time. The 
nightingale, the throstle, and the lark, warble as of old. 
And Adam’s descendants bear about with them no im¬ 
proved form of the human face divine. And yet the soul 


37 


Ancient and Modern Poetry. 

within is no way shackled in its development, from lack of 
novelty on that score. What if the spiritual creations of 
man’s brain be able to fulfil their every function without 
any necessity for new forms ?—at least sufficiently so to 
make us content with the progress of Poetry, even 
though she may not cast herself into strange postures. 

Having said thus much on the prospects of Poetry, we 
may appropriately conclude with a few words on the tone 
of mind in which it should be read and studied. We 
should bring to it, if only for our own sakes, a loving and 
teachable spirit. A captiously criticising spirit is inju¬ 
rious to its possessor, and apt to reduce his mind, in the 
long run, to a state of atrophy, for which there is at last 
no remedy—it grows leaner and leaner in the midst of 
abundance. A blind, indiscriminate hunger, which swal¬ 
lows all things alike, is, indeed, to be eschewed ; but of 
the two extremes this is more hopeful than the other. For 
excessive admiration may with time be reduced within 
bounds, as every fresh object of comparison has a ten¬ 
dency to correct its scale; but the spirit, that is ever 
looking out for objects of censure, has entered on a career, 
whose negative character more and more breeds a dis¬ 
taste for the positive, however good ; and, could its barren 
path by any possibility lead where it would for once find 
itself face to face with perfection, nothing but discomfort 
could result from an interview for which the loving spirit 
alone is fitted or worthy. 

The precise importance, therefore, of the student es¬ 
chewing altogether, or at least keeping within compass, 
that cavilling love of fastening on the defects in a per¬ 
formance in preference to its beauties, is, that he will 
thereby be in a better condition, and, indeed, in the only 
possible condition, for appreciating the poem: for the 
poet’s spirit is essentially a constructive and loving spirit, 
not destructive and malignant. He is alive to beauty, 



38 


Periodical Literature. 


and by the instinct of his nature is drawn towards it, and 
simply turns from the reverse. The spirit of the reader 
should he in harmony with the author he studies, or, for 
his own sake, the sooner they part company the better. 


II. 

PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 

[January, 1850 .] 

HE civilization of modern times, like every 
great fact, reveals itself under various phases; 
hut, perhaps, to an attentive observer, its not 
least significant feature is Periodical Litera¬ 
ture. The demand and supply alike testify to a high 
civilization, both mental and physical. Mental, inasmuch 
as it is a sign unmistakeable that knowledge, which in 
ancient times was wont to gather itself in glittering pools 
here and there on the surface of society, leaving the rest a 
dreary desert unrefreshed, is now diffusing itself abroad 
and through its very depths, above and below, everywhere 
operating with fertilizing vigour, wakening a thousand 
sleeping germs into life, ill things, it must he confessed, 
and of a good growth together, hut still redolent of activity 
and progress. Nor is it less significant of civilization in 
its physical aspect. What command over the necessaries 
of life, and its mechanical arts, must have been attained by 
society, before a periodical literature like that of our country 
could have grown up in it! Of this he will be sensible, 
who considers the necessary conditions of existence in the 
most trivial publication. Periodical Literature is sympto¬ 
matic of mind astir in the mass of the community, and how 
much astir is a subject of grave reflection, but not unconso- 





Periodical Literature. 


39 


latory, for him who believes that, in the conflict of good and 
evil elements, the good must finally prevail. Cicero has 
taken occasion to observe upon the restless activity of the 
human mind, but the activity of those times shrinks into 
nothing in comparison with what now prevails. Nine- 
tenths of the population are waging the great battle—the 
battle for their daily bread ; and yet, withal, in the interval 
of breathing-time allowed them from their struggle with 
bodily wants, they clamorously demand wherewith to stay 
the cravings of the mind. To satisfy that craving, the 
cheap periodical is among the readiest means at hand. 
But woe to him who, when his brother asketh bread, giveth 
him a stone, or profits by his hot thirst to offer the poisoned 
chalice to his lips! And blessings on those who have 
worked hard to bring light and knowledge home to the 
hearths of their toil-bound brethren ! And, if this craving 
be intense, it is no less discursive and tenacious. Every 
thing is challenged to yield up its quantum. Nor would it 
perhaps be easy to point out a single subject of intrinsic 
importance that has entirely lost its interest. Thought 
flows on in a thousand streams, widening as they go to 
swell the sum of human knowledge. Fluctuations there 
will be as often as some orb of mind appears above the 
literary horizon, to raise a spring-tide presently in that 
direction. If a poet, then after poetry do men run with 
more than usual vehemence ; if a brilliant historian arise, 
then are we smitten with eagerness to ransack our country’s 
annals. The author of Waverley burst upon the world 
from a new region of fiction, and historical novels became 
long the order of the day. So of the other departments. 
Each in its turn is raised above its usual height, and, when 
the temporary disturbing influence is abated, subsides into 
its ordinary channel, but still flows; for, in their due pro¬ 
portion, the interest in all things continues, if that interest 
be intrinsic. And here, in part, lies the foundation of 


40 


Periodical Literature, 


prosperity of periodicals in tlie bulk. They treat among 
them of everything, and are maintained by the taste for 
everything being some way or other alive among the people; 
for fewer things die out than is often supposed. 

Having said thus much of periodicals in general, it is 
time for a word or two of ourselves in particular; and in 
this our first number stating on what we rest our claims to 
public attention. The work, as our title indicates, will be 
a Literary Miscellany; its general aim the old object—the 
utile dulci —of being agreeable and useful, of combining 
pleasure with instruction,—in the pursuit of which, we 
shall deem all matters of general interest our proper pro¬ 
vince, except where they run into party politics; for these 
we shall sedulously eschew, not as deficient in interest, nor 
as being ourselves impassive on those points, but because 
we know them, from experience both of ourselves and 
others, that they engage men’s minds too deeply, and too 
excitingly, to square with the somewhat even tone that 
should characterize a periodical of a literary character. 
In politics it is all sun or all shade; and we would rather 
rejoice in a neutral light. With regard to Theology, too, 
the most important of all subjects, towering above the rest 
as far as man’s eternal interests transcend the limits of his 
brief sojourn in this life, we shall exercise a similar dis¬ 
cretion. Religious topics especially crave a fitting time 
and place, as well as fitting persons to handle them. If 
approached with a Gallio-like indifference, the cause suffers, 
and perhaps scarcely less from mistaken zeal, which is apt 
in its hot haste to overturn that calm-paced charity without 
which religion is but a name. And if there be any other 
subject, the treating of which is more calculated to rouse 
the angry feelings than to make us wiser and better, we 
shall avoid that. But with these qualifications, all topics 
of interest we shall deem within our scope, whether literary 
or scientific, historical or statistic. So much for the matter; 


Colonies and Commerce. 


41 


and for tlie form, we shall endeavour to vary this, as far as 
we may, to suit the various tastes of our readers, that each 
may find something to his liking. Essays and Tales, 
whether original or translations; Criticisms and Poetry. 

We shall find a corner too for occasional problems in 
chess, to try the ingenuity of such as love that time- 
honoured game, whose origin seems lost in remote anti¬ 
quity. 

In conclusion, we propose paying our respects to the 
public monthly, until our publisher, judging by the demand 
for our lucubrations, shall acquaint us that our visits are 
not acceptable. In which case, however we may retain 
our habits of a Looker-on, it will he to see all and say 
nothing. 


III. 

COLONIES AND COMMERCE. 

[February, 1850 .] 

OLDINGr ourselves at liberty to glance from 
time to time at the matters of high interest that 
pass around us, we thought a word or two not 
out of place, touching what bids fair to become 
a question of very absorbing interest, viz. the connexion 
of this great Empire with its colonies. Our readers, 
however, must not expect us to discuss here what would 
greatly transcend our limits and scope. Neque dicere 
conamur tenues grandia. We leave the Leviathans, in 
yellow or blue, to tempest the ocean with such big themes. 
But, floating in shallow waters, where their huge bulk 
might perhaps not reach, it seemed to us we might be 
useful in our generation, if we touched on the frame of 
mind in which we apprehend the discussion should be 







42 


Colonies and Commerce. 


approached; especially when we consider the numbers 
who are apt to decide trenchantly on questions however 
complex or important without at all reflecting whether 
they possess the data for a decision. 

Nor in acquitting ourselves of this task shall we be 
greatly moved though we be taxed with uttering common¬ 
place. For what is- common-place ? The term is relative. 
The common-place of one man and one set is often far 
from the common-place of another. It is moreover with 
our opinions as with our libraries, where many a book of 
acknowledged value, and never mentioned but with enco¬ 
mium, yet lies from one year’s end to another on the 
shelf undisturbed. He then that should call the owner’s 
attention to some truth in one of those neglected dusty 
tomes would be doing him a service. So with the iteration 
of common-place, he who is the means in any one instance 
of taking down an admitted truth from the shelf, and 
bringing it from the sphere of bare acquiescence into that 
of action, has done a service, although no great ability be 
required for its performance. And after all we would say 
this much to the too rigid objector against the touching 
on stale truths, or the much eschewed common-place. 
Either you admit the truth or you do not. If not, then, 
as to you, it is no common-place. If you do, then act up 
to your conviction of all stale truths, and yours will he no 
common-place character, and, therefore, no criterion by 
which to measure our utility with others. 

Our relations with our Colonies, there can he no doubt, 
call for immediate and anxious deliberation, in the course 
of which questions will arise whose solution may affect the 
interests more or less of every man, woman, and child in 
the Empire. But we grieve to reflect that thousands and 
thousands may he brought to believe themselves very 
remotely if at all concerned in them, and thereby give the 
weight of their influence, aggregately very great, with the 


Colonies and Commerce. 


43 


nonchalance of men dealing with speculative opinions, or 
the prejudiced decision of men that see but one side of an 
unexamined question. It is of this nonchalance or this 
prejudice that we would beseech the poorest individual in 
her Majesty’s dominions to rid himself; and that, in what 
may come very home to him and his in their battling for 
bread, he keep his mind free from indifference on the one 
hand, and one-sidedness on the other. Nor let him put 
up with the notion that what he thinks will not affect the 
question. What he singly thinks certainly may not, but 
what millions in like condition with himself think indu¬ 
bitably will. It behoves therefore each of those millions 
individually to see that he think aright. And if each man 
were as anxious to be right, before adding his influence to 
an opinion, as if with him lay the momentum of his 
country’s fate, that country could not but fare the better 
for it. True it is that millions echoing one man’s mistake 
make it no less a mistake, but yet add how fearfully to its 
potency for mischief; mischief only to be eschewed by 
each looking to himself that he be not made the medium 
of transmitting the error. Shall we rid us of our Colonies ? 
for so the rough phrase sometimes runs, is a question on 
which it especially behoves every one to avoid leading 
others, or being himself led astray. Those who are for 
undervaluing the connexion seem not indisposed often to 
treat it as if we had to do with distant and profitless pro¬ 
vinces, where the government-machinery costs us money, 
and whence we derive no tribute. “ Cut the connexion,” 
say they, “ and there is so much money saved.” And this 
might be to the point, were we dealing with provinces, 
held as Rome held hers, and which she valued, according 
as they filled her treasury, or recruited her legions. But 
we, in common with every commercial country, are very 
differently circumstanced. Provinces would indeed be an 
incumbrance, but our Colonies are not provinces. And 


44 


Colonies and Commerce. 


the return for what they cost us is not in the shape of tri¬ 
bute, nor of direct money-returns to the Exchequer, but 
in the degree in which they augment the volume, and affect 
the circulation of blood of this vast Empire, trunk and 
limbs, throughout; whose being, at least whose well-being, 
whose prosperity, and glory, and high enviable position, 
resides not in the trunk merely, or in this or that limb, 
but in the well-to-do condition of the whole. And he who 
watches the outflow from the heart to the extremities, and 
sees not the thousand channels by which it returns thither, 
who sees the arteries but ignores the veins, would seem to 
us not very qualified for the inquiry on which he has 
entered. What we pay by the Exchequer, and the partial 
restraints of trade in respect of colonial produce, perhaps 
represent pretty nearly the price we pay for the advan¬ 
tages of the connexion. And the balance we believe to be 
greatly in our favour. We believe that the commerce of 
this country has grown up with its Colonies, and its 
prosperity with both; and that to sever them would fatally 
affect all three. However, we are not here pressing our 
own views, but calling earnestly upon every man to do 
what in him lies to see that the question is not decided 
without being fairly discussed, be the truth on which side 
it may. Those who persist in considering them, not as an 
integral part of our body politic, but as an excrescence, 
and an unhealthy one to boot (for some we believe go that 
length), we would ask to reflect whether it may not have 
struck its roots deep into the life’s issues of the patient, 
and therefore pause before they seize the knife for ampu¬ 
tation, or death may be the result of their glib surgery. 
And the poor man, whose daily avocations admit but little 
opportunity of becoming acquainted with some important 
questions in all their bearings, with which however he 
comes in contact in some one of them, we would entreat 
not to act in his sphere upon a partial view; nor too 


Colonies and Commerce. 


45 


readily yield assent to those who would have him take lip 
their views, equally partial, though more plausibly set off 
with all the dexterity of oratorical display. Kemember, 
it must indeed be a smooth difficulty, whether in politics 
or political economy, that can be settled in an after-dinner 
speech, or a platform oration. The difference between 
talking and doing is one also that strikes us in the lighter 
matters of every-day life. And any man may appeal to 
his own experience ; for few hut have heard very plausible 
talking upon matters which come within their own know¬ 
ledge, and on which for that very reason the plausible 
speaker moves them not a jot. For they know how the 
truth is, although they may not he able to put it as cle¬ 
verly as he does the opposite. Let them carry this 
experience along with them when they hear one dis¬ 
coursing smoothly upon matters where they are less at 
home, and before they act on his suggestions, bethink 
them whether his harangue he not a plausible jack-a- 
lantern—a mere shining specious seeming, that leads on 
to quags, and bogs, mistakes, and bewilderment. Do we 
say, pay no heed ? On the contrary, pay much; only 
weigh well before you act. Think not that one speaker, 
or one set of speakers, can engross the truth. Think all 
great questions have many sides, and do your best to get 
a peep at them all. The most mischievous scheme has 
some plausible side, or it would never be mischievous, for 
none would bestow a second glance upon it. And in hotly 
mooted questions the truth is often distributed between the 
disputants. To get it entire you must be content to pick 
it out in fragments from each. You will find this in the 
lesser questions that come under your own eye. Depend 
on it, with the^ weightier and more comprehensive pro¬ 
blems, moral or political, it is the same. Circumspection, 
diligence, caution, are the indispensable conditions of 
arriving at the truth. Caution, too, against a quarter where 


46 


Colonies and Commerce. 


we are least apt to point it, against ourselves, especially in 
matters of deep concernment. For men are more easily 
flattered than argued out of their interests; and no argu¬ 
ments arc so taking as those which fall in with our own 
foregone conclusions. And if such circumspection be 
needful in other questions, it is especially so in all that 
concerns our commercial relations. Their complexity and 
importance make it that mistake is more easy, and at the 
same time more fatal. The more easy, that men are prone 
to hasty isolated views from what passes under their own 
eye. And the more fatal, that commerce in its parts is so 
connected as to admit of no such partial consideration. 
Cripple one branch and the injury is not confined to that. 
Whatever branch in which much capital is embarked suffers 
a shock, the vibration is sensibly felt throughout the system. 
As a subject of inquiry it is the more arduous, as requiring 
the rare union of practical knowledge with scientific 
breadth of comprehension. The mere theorist is apt to 
look at it from too great a distance, observing its general 
bearings certainly, but not sufficiently familiar with its 
details. The mere practical man, a merchant for instance, 
is happy in his acquaintance with detail, but it is only the 
detail of his own branch, to which, however (so apt are 
we to overrate our own knowledge) he is often so wedded 
as to undervalue an extensive view of the subject. The 
truth is, he stands too close. He distinguishes each sepa¬ 
rate stone of one wing of the building, but cannot judge 
of the general aspect of the edifice until he deign to 
remove farther off. He is like the soldier in actual en¬ 
gagement, avIio can talk from experience of the spot 
where he fought, but knows little of the general bearings 
and fluctuations of the battle. And what aggravates the 
difficulty, detail is, in some measure, the soul of the 
inquiry. In gathering which, we had need be cautious 
how we adopt the opinions of the parties themselves, as to 



Colonies and Commerce. 


47 


the channels in which their particular capital is embarked; 
for, to hear some talk, you would imagine commerce and 
its relations were confined within the compass of the oil 
trade, or the hard-ware, or the cotton trade; whereas 
there is no one branch of such sole importance as to admit 
of exclusive consideration, nor any so insignificant as to 
be passed over in the calculation. 

If such then be the necessity for anxious deliberation in 
dealing with any one branch, what must it be in dealing 
with them all—commerce in the aggregate, and, with it, 
the dearest and best interests of the Empire ?—for no less 
is, we believe, involved in the question of our Colonial 
connexions. Those who are disposed to think lightly of 
them would do well to consider whether that Commerce, in 
the prosecution of which we belt the world, and, so to speak, 
almost without going out of our dominions, would be the 
same were those splendid possessions ours no longer;— 
whether, if we had neither stations nor troops always at 
hand to protect them, our merchants could push their 
enterprises to remote parts, savage often times, and bar¬ 
barous, with equal success. We are powerful, we are 
great; but let us not forget the conditions of our greatness 
and our strength. Commerce and Colonies go so together 
that take away the latter; and much of the former will 
follow. History shows how they contribute to the strength 
and resources of the mother country. Spain, it is true, 
profited little by hers; but she was not a commercial 
nation, and, with the advent of the House of Austria, lost 
all chance of becoming so. Thenceforward what she drew 
from them in the vulgar form of tribute was wasted in the 
•wars which the intolerance and ambition of her sovereigns 
kindled in Europe. Nor is there, we believe, an instance 
of a commercial nation losing all her colonies and yet re¬ 
taining her rank. Portugal lost her position in Europe 
temporarily, during her annexation to Spain, but pcrma- 


48 


Colonies and Commerce. 


nently by the opportunity tlience afforded to the Dutch of 
stripping* her of the East India possessions won by the 
genius and valour of Albuquerque. And, if the Dutch in 
their turn were beaten by us in the race commercial, it was 
because we also outstripped them in the race colonial. The 
loss of our American colonies by the war of independence, 
and our growth notwithstanding, in all that constitutes 
greatness, must not be quoted against us. For we had 
much of Colonial possessions left, and in that part of the 
world, not to mention the other compensating influences 
that have since come into play. To infer thence that we 
should bear a total loss, and not be the worse for it, is 
pretty much like contending that, if a man lose one eye 
without being in darkness, he may lose the other also, and 
yet continue to see. 

Our greatness has been growing, and, we trust, is far 
from having reached its culminating point. And its high 
development is a source of much congratulation with us all, 
and the occasion of rather aggressive comparisons with 
some. It has been said of us in connexion with another 
great power, Russia, that we could double or crumple her 
up, we forget which, with the greatest facility. We know 
not how this may be, but we do know that lopping our 
limbs at the shoulder would be an ill preparative for the 
operation. And of this too we are sure, that no power 
would profit more by any mistake of ours. Our naval 
supremacy resting on our commercial, and this again on 
our Colonial supremacy, is the one great impediment to the 
fulfilment of her dearest aspirations—the throne of the 
Constantines. Much has been said, and variously, as to 
her strength and resources, some running up the estimate 
to an alarming pitch, while others speak disparagingly of 
both. For ourselves we incline to think there is truth in 
both views. We believe her resources to be enormous, but 
rather in prospect than actual. For actual and available 


Colonies and Commerce . 


49 


strength, we believe that she is vastly over-rated, and that 
she could not maintain a struggle single-handed with any 
one of the great powers, and come off with credit. But 
for her future prospects, if time frustrate them not, they 
seem almost beyond calculation. At present that empire 
strikes us, so to speak, like Frankenstein’s monster, a large- 
limbed, gigantic thing, lying stretched out, its vast bulk 
inert as yet, and awaiting the spark Promethean to start up 
into full possession of its enormous powers. That spark is 
the possession of Constantinople. Without that she will 
always remain secondary; with it she will command the 
world or at least this hemisphere. Once in that central 
position, military, commercial, and political, nothing can 
dislodge her. In her hands it will be no isolated posses¬ 
sion, as in those of any other power, for she will hold all 
that leads up to it. Northward to the pole, stretching 
broadly to the right and to the left, all is hers, and the 
other sides close encircled by a population chiefly of a 
faith to make them hail the domination of the Czar, with a 
cordiality equal to that with which they detest the heretic 
western nations of the Latin Church. Once there, what is 
our position ? Where is our commerce ? In a contest, 
where look for an ally ? Austria, quietly housing under 
the shadow of Eussia, would snooze on while her Danubian 
provinces and her Italian were left her, and having no 
commerce to care for, would not concern herself about the 
matter. Prussia would have enough to do to see to her¬ 
self, and what with a Zollverein, and a territorial compen¬ 
sation Rhinewards, would not care to compromise herself 
on our account. Nor might France be averse to accept 
some gaudy equivalent in the Mediterranean, with the 
guarantee of her African colonies and the Rhine for a 
frontier. An arrangement which would not be greatly 
embittered by the detriment entailed on perfidious Albion. 
The Northern Powers, whatever their inclinations, would 

E 


50 


Colonies and Commerce. 


hardly embroil themselves with so powerful an adversary 
for the sake of us, whose aid, they say, is not always forth¬ 
coming when required. In such a state of things, the 
doubling up or crumpling process would task all our 
energies. May those energies never be crippled by hastily 
casting old tried weapons away, because they cost us some¬ 
what in the furbishing. In all eventualities we look to see 
England weather worse storms than any she has yet en¬ 
countered. And our confidence in her riding safely 
through is unabated. And that confidence, under Provi¬ 
dence, mainly rests on the one distinguishing feature of the 
English character which, we think, differences us from 
foreigners, that we will see our way before we act, while they 
act first and see their way afterwards. The result of which 
is that we have had many changes, and, properly speaking, 
no revolution ; and they many revolutions, and often, sub¬ 
stantially, without a change. With this temper it will be 
long before we painfully illustrate the lines of Dryden :— 

“ When empire in its childhood first appears, 

A watchful fate o’ersees its tender years: 

Till grown more strong, it thrusts and stretches out, 

And elbows all the kingdoms round about. 

The place thus made for its first breathing free, 

It moves again for ease and luxury: 

Till swelling by degrees it has possest 

The greater space, and now crowds up the rest. 

When from behind there starts some petty state, 

And pushes on its now unwieldy fate. 

Then down the precipice of time it goes, 

And sinks in minutes, which in ages rose.” 


T. E. Cour. 


51 


IV. 

OMENS, AND AN OMINOUS ANNOUNCEMENT. 

Non praeter solitum leves. 

[March, 1850.] 

IME present* hath been well designated an 
evanescent point that eludes our grasp, and is 
continually converting itself into that great 
funded debt of the human race, the Past. No 
wonder therefore that memory is so on the rummage among 
things gone by, while the imagination would fain be 
equally busy with the future—that future in front of which 
we sit, in this theatre-world of ours, like an impatient 
audience before the curtain rises, many eager to catch a 
glimpse of what all will see when the play begins, and none 
before. 

To this inherent curiosity about the future, and the care¬ 
fulness with which every supposed prognostic has been 
noted and treasured up, must be partly ascribed the in¬ 
fluence of signs and omens in past times, and its yet 
lingering in nooks and corners where the light of ad¬ 
vancing knowledge has failed to penetrate; for these 
follies bat-like hover in the twilight of the mind, and dis¬ 
appear with the brightening dawn of human reason, which 
is peremptory in allowing of no absurdities but those that 
are akin to itself. In these days of Polytechnics and 
electric lights, superstitious fancies must even take wing 
and away. Conjectural folly is furnished with a more 
rational field of bewilderment in rail-road shares, for 
example, and foreign scrip. Here it will find ample scope 



* If it hath not been so designated it ought to have been. 






52 Omens, and an Ominous Announcement . 

for working out the classic problem —ut cum ratione 
insanias. 

The trustful faith, however, and the curiosity, of former 
times had no such convenient arena. With less light, and 
no less eagerness to he thrusting in the dark, they would 
grope in every hole and corner, and turn their straining 
eyes on every side to catch a glimpse of the forthcoming, 
and challenge every trivial circumstance for a hint of what 
good or evil luck was at hand. The chirping of a bird or 
the cawing of a rook was a “ voice potential ” for weal or 
woe with them, as the veracious rumours of the Stock 
Exchange might be with us. But the art of self-torment- 
ing, in which the human race in all ages hath shown 
peculiar expertness, would have lacked its last refinement 
if the individual had failed to carry about with him the 
materials of vexation. Accordingly we find it was not 
wanting in this particular. Though every external source 
of luck squared smooth with him, he might yet himself 
easily mar the prosperous course of things by an unlucky 
expression—some ominous exclamation, perhaps on that 
very account ever ready to leap to his lips, in spite of the 
speaker’s repeatedly cuffing it back again. We incline to 
think an instance of this is furnished by Demosthenes in 
the opening of his Oration upon the Crown, where, on the 
point of alluding to the possible adverse decision of his 
audience, he checks himself, declaring that he would not 
utter anything ominous at the outset of his harangue. 
Some such classic recollection was possibly in Milton’s 
mind when he made Belial characterize Moloch’s speech 
as casting “ Ominous conjecture on the whole success.” 
A similar spirit dictated the civilities of the ancients towards 
those very uncouth damsels, the Furies, who must have 
smiled with grim satisfaction at the flattering epithet of 
Eumenides, or the gentle-minded, if, like our good Queen 
Bess of glorious memory, they clutched at compliment 


Omens i and an Ominous Announcement. 53 

most eagerly on the precise points where it was least 
deserved. 

This dread of uttering certain phrases, from fear of some 
unknown consequences thence to arise, would appear to 
have been pretty prevalent. And our next instance we 
will fetch from Asia, that land which seems to have stereo¬ 
typed, the past. Layard, in his “ Nineveh and its Re¬ 
mains,” (a work which is yet more interesting if possible 
for its account of living races, than the monuments even 
of by-gone days,) speaks of the Yezedis as nervously 
shrinking from the utterance of certain words remotely 
allusive to the Gentleman in Black. u So far,” he says, 
“ is their dread of offending the Evil Principle carried 
that they carefully avoided every expression which may 
resemble in sound the name of Satan, or the Arabic word 
for “ accursed.” Thus, in speaking of a river, they will 
not say Shat, because it is too nearly connected with the 
first syllable in Sheitan, the Devil; but substitute Nalir. 
Nor, for the same reason, will they utter the word Keitan, 
thread or fringe. Ncial, a horse-shoe, and Naal-bcind, a 
farrier, are forbidden words, because they approach to 
Ncicd , a curse, and Mcdoun, accursed.” 

This we fancy they do with more of reverence, yet with 
somewhat similar apprehension of consequences, to that 
which prompted the worthy Wagner’s caution to Faust. 

“ Berufe nicht die wohlbekannte Schaar, 

Die stromend sich im Dunstkreis iiberbreitet, 

Dem Menschen tausendfaltige Gefakr, 

Yon alien Enden her, bereitet. 

Von Norden dringt der scharfe Geisterzahn 
Auf dich herbei, mit pfeilgespitzten Zungen; 

Yon Morgen ziebn, vertrocknend, sie heran, 

Und nahren sich von deinen Lungen; 

Wenn sie der Mittag aus der Wuste shickt, 

Die Gluth auf Gluth um deinen Scheitel haufen, 

So bringt der West den Schwarm, der erst erquickt, 

Um dich und Feld und Aue zu ersaufen. 


54 Omens, and an Ominous Announcement, 

Sie lioren gern, zum Schaden froh gewandt, 

Gehorchen gern, weil sie uns gern betriigen, 

Sie stellen wie vom Himmel sich gesandt, 

Und lispeln english wenn sie liigen.” 

* Prognostics, we trust, do not always work their own 
fulfilment, and fortunately we live in an age rather sceptical 
of “ winged words,” however bodeful in the utterance, ever 
turning to little imps to plague us in the sequel. Else 
should we reproach ourselves for the ominous allusion to a 
possible suspension of our Looking-on functions, with which 
we concluded the prefatory article of our first number. 
For, although we are not fallen, we trust, in the evil case of 
a total standstill, yet are we free to confess that the number 
of periodicals, that have started up concurrently with us, or 
were on foot before, do so crowd about us that we feel our 
respiration thereby greatly impeded. And such an offus- 
cation of our vision withal is the result that we cannot 
catch a glimpse of our numerous friends, that we know 
must be thronging in the distance. Nor have we breath 
enough left to get at them if we could. The consequence 
of which unlucky posture of affairs is that we must husband 
our breath to one half our utterance in the former number, 
and return to sixteen pages. And we fear this is not all. 
Necessity, that knows no law, compels us to trespass yet 
further on the indulgence of our friends, and, not only, 
Sibyl-like, diminish the quantity of our leaves, but advance 
their price. Our future lucubrations will be charged two¬ 
pence a number unless we find that sum is considered too 
high, in which case we shall be reluctantly compelled to 
take a final leave of our readers. 

T. E. Court. 

* The remainder of this paper was omitted by the editors, who 
had asked the writer for an announcement of the change alluded to 
in it, but, altering their minds, inserted the article without the latter 
portion, which is restored here to complete what was defective as an 
Essay on Omens, but well enough for the purpose intended. 


55 


y. 

MARRIAGE WITH DECEASED WIFE’S SISTER. 

[April, 1850.] 

MONG tlie causes, many and complex, which 
concurrently work the prosperity of a nation, it 
would be hard, if not impossible, to assign the 
exact amount of efficiency in each. We shall 
not, however, greatly err in thinking that England’s pro¬ 
sperity and progress, and her comparative immunity from 
those revolutionary epidemics so dangerous to both, are, 
under Providence, attributable to no one cause more than 
to the domestic habits of her people. Home and its influ¬ 
ences in this country anchor the individual too fast to allow 
of his being swept from his moorings by every political 
blast. The in-door life of the Englishman neutralizes the 
political fervour with which our Continental neighbours 
would seem to be so irresistibly borne away. He may lack 
the vivacity and the lighter social qualities of the gay 
Parisian, whom his “ esprit de societe ” renders so much 
more agreeable to strangers—who seeks his amusements 
rather abroad than at home—who has one set of acquaint¬ 
ances, and his wife another—a want of communion which 
leaves each more open to external influences, with less to 
counteract them than here. The pet policy of the moment 
there penetrates at once into the recesses of private life, 
unbroken, unqualified, irresistibly; and opinion becomes as 
centralized as their government, each assemblee fermenting 
with the political fervour of the day, and each member 
with that of the assemblee. It was, we believe, at a soiree 
that the famous Marseillaise was concocted. 



56 Marriage with Deceased Wife's Sister. 

Tlie Englishman is the converse of this. He lives out 
of doors less, and, retaining more of the individual, thinks 
more for himself, and less through the public. More 
communion prevails in his family, and he is more the 
centre round which all moves. Woman’s influence is great 
in both countries, hut here it is more peculiarly exerted in 
its legitimate sphere of action—in private, at home, and in 
the bosom of her family. And if the operative catch a 
little of revolutionary fever, over a cup of ale abroad, his 
good wife at home will, ten to one, on his return, by 
enquiring what is to come of their children, wean him from 
violence. The canny Luath of Burns was not so far wrong 
in his estimate of his biped masters. For after all, 

“ The dearest comfort o’ their lives 
Their grushie weans an’ faithfu’ wives; 

The prattling things are just their pride, 

That sweetens a’ their fire-side.” 

Such and so great being the importance of the domestic 
character of our people, proportionate must be the interest 
of every question that affects it, and proportionate the 
obligation of approaching its discussion in a spirit of 
fairness, and candour, and desire for the truth, without 
cavilling and without prejudice. Such a question is the 
subject of this article, and in such a spirit we would handle 
it, honestly and soberly setting forth our own views, with 
all respect for those who honestly and soberly arrive at an 
opposite conclusion. 

The effect of the law as it now stands is to place rela¬ 
tionship by affinity, and that by consanguinity, on the same 
footing, as a bar to the intermarriage of persons so cir¬ 
cumstanced ; or more vernacularly, relations by law can no 
more marry with one another than blood relations within 
the prohibited degrees. As, therefore, own brother and 
sister cannot marry, so neither can a man marry his 
deceased wife’s sister, because he is her brother by affinity. 



Marriage with Deceased Wife's Sister. 57 

The question is, should this latter restriction be done away 
with, and the law establishing it be repealed ? We think 
it should not. 

We have no intention of entering into the history of 
this law, as that would very much exceed our limits, nor 
into the private grounds whether of the recent statute or 
the earlier enactments of Henry VIII, as we see no pur¬ 
pose it could answer, since laws are to be repealed or 
retained upon their own merits, and not on the motives of 
the movers. We would however advert to some erroneous 
notions entertained on the subject. The restriction is 
supposed by many to be altogether of civil creation in this 
country, and by some to be of very recent date, viz., the 
5th and 6th William IV. 

On the contrary, the restriction is wholly ecclesiastical 
in its original, and of a date how ancient needs not be 
mooted here, but certainly much antecedent to the earliest 
of our acts of Parliament. The function of the lay- 
legislation moreover, if we may so term it, has been to 
confine the ecclesiastical within narrower limits. And in 
the very affair of Henry the Eighth’s marriage with 
Catherine, it was no lack of any general disability to marry 
his brother’s widow that lay in the way of his divorce, but 
the Pope’s dispensation from that disability, which had 
been obtained, and relieved that particular marriage from 
its scope. Accordingly the enactments of the statute 
Henry VIII. are couched in language that points at a 
more extensive range of disabilities under the law eccle¬ 
siastic, and restrains the operations of their courts to mar¬ 
riage within the Levitical degrees. Marriage with a 
deceased wife’s sister was supposed to be within those 
degrees, and, therefore, within the permitted range of 
ecclesiastical restriction. The result of all which, up to 
the period of the passing the act of 5th and 6th William 
IV, was that marriage with a deceased wife’s sister was a 


58 Marriage with Deceased Wife’s Sister . 

voidable marriage, i. e. could be set aside, and that by any 
person choosing to institute a suit for the purpose in the 
ecclesiastical court. But this must have been during the 
joint lives of the parties, or the lay court would have inter¬ 
posed. Accordingly when, after the decease of one of the 
parties who had so married, the bishop’s court was pro¬ 
ceeding to annul the marriage, and bastardize the issue, 
the court of King’s Bench granted a prohibition as to that, 
but permitted them to proceed to punish the husband for 
incest. 1 Black. Com. p. 435. The act of William IV. 
did no more than render such marriages void, without the 
necessity of previously instituting a suit for that purpose. 
With these passing observations on the ecclesiastical origin 
of the restriction, and the amount and nature of the lay 
legislation upon it, we proceed at once to consider whether 
such marriages should be permitted. And here we are 
ready to admit that no express divine prohibition, that we 
are aware of, stands in the way; for the passage in Levi¬ 
ticus * we hold, with all deference to those who differ with 

* It seems strange that the prohibition of marriage with a wife’s 
sister in Leviticus xviii. 18, could be thought to bear on this ques¬ 
tion, when the restriction is there so palpably limited to the life-time 
of the wife. (And the judges accordingly in Parsons’ case held 
the marriage was not within the degrees, Co. Litt. 235 a, though 
this decision was in a subsequent similar case reversed, and, it is said, 
expunged out of the First Institute by order of the King and Council. 
Ibid, note 149. Since which the stream of authorities has set against 
the validity of such marriages.) Equally inapplicable is the verse 16, 
prohibiting marriage with a brother’s wife, which those who use it 
as an authority would read “ widow,” and thence by analogy apply 
it to deceased wife’s sister. But observe it is “ wife,” not widow, 
and in the original, “ esheth,” Hebrew for “ wife ” or “ woman,” 
the French “ femme,” in fact, and not “ almanah,” the word for 
widow, nor “ jevemeth,” the one word employed to express the 
relation between the widow and her deceased husband’s brother. 
It is used in the masculine or feminine, according as the one or the 
other is spoken of, and actually occurs as a verb expressive of marry¬ 
ing a deceased brother’s widow, at Genesis xxxviii. 8, which our 
version renders simply “ marry,” while the happier constitution of 


Marriage with Deceased Wife's Sister. 59 

us, to be inapplicable to the question, which we would 
accordingly deal with on purely social grounds. 

Two grounds are usually put for the removal of the 
restriction; one, that on the decease of the wife no person 
so fit to take care of the children as the aunt. Admitting 
the force of this to the full—that the aunt must of necessity 
be a good second mother to the children, and never in the 
event of a second brood make the first rough it in com¬ 
parison—still the advantages thence resulting are only 
applicable to the minority of cases, viz., where the wife dies, 
leaving children needing care, is survived by her sister, 
and that sister willing to marry the man and he her. The 
disadvantages which a removal of the restriction throws upon 
the familiar intercourse of the parties, is one of a range 
vastly more extensive, applicable to all cases of wives with 
unmarried sisters, and that during the lives of the parties. 

The other ground is that the sense of the people is 

Greek enabled the Septuagint to come a step nearer in the word 
e7rLyc(/i(3p£V(Tcu. Indeed, such a prohibition had been in manifest 
contradiction with the recommendation, almost amounting to com¬ 
mand, that where a man died childless, his brother should marry the 
widow. Deut. xxv. 5, et seq. On the contrary, it seems to have 
been rather meant of the wife divorced from her husband, he being 
yet alive. A provision how imperatively called for none will doubt 
who considers how lightly a man, under the Jewish law, might put 
his wife away, giving her a bill of divorcement, and dismissing her 
without imputation on her virtue; for it will be recollected that 
adultery was visited not by divorce, but by death. And it was pre¬ 
cisely by disregard of this very prohibition, and marrying Herodias, 
his brother Philip’s divorced wife, that Herod drew on himself the 
rebuke of John the Baptist, alluded to in Matthew xiv. 3,4. Of this 
Josephus speaks in the following terms:—“ Herodias took upon her 
to confound the laws of our country, and divorced herself from her 
husband while he was yet alive, and was married to Herod, her 
husband’s brother by the father’s side; he was tetrarch of Galilee.” 
Antiq. b. 18, c. 6. 

Perhaps, too, the expression in Lev. xviii. 18, “to vex her,” 
might point this way; for what more calculated to wound a woman’s 
feelings than to see herself thrust from her husband’s home, and 
supplanted by her sister ? 


60 Marriage with Deceased Wife’s Sister, 

against the restriction, that they disregard it, and that 
parties so circumstanced live together, and will continue to 
live together as man and wife, and that therefore it is 
useless, as well as pernicious, to withhold the sanction of 
the law from a practice that will continue in spite of it. 
Now, although we are not much in favour of the Jaissez- 
faire system, or of the law abdicating its first and noblest 
function of control for the public morals and happiness of a 
nation, we admit that this argument, if the facts it assumes, 
viz. the practice of the people, and the impossibility of 
weaning them from it, be proved, is, other things equal, of 
great force for the propriety of making the law harmonize 
with the practice. But we do not think matters have gone 
so far, and, in the absence of clear proof to the contrary, 
we are disposed to question the practice being either 
general or inveterate. As to its generality, the slightest 
reflection will convince us that widowers with an irrepres¬ 
sible determination to marry or live in concubinage with a 
deceased wife’s sister, and that sister also responding 
thereto, must form a mere sprinkling in the statistics of 
married life. And that, as regards them, therefore, we 
are not dealing with anything of a preponderating and 
prevailing character, as, for instance, if it were proposed to 
wean the people from tea-drinking, and so touch the habits 
of nine-tenths of the population. And yet the argument 
is pressed as warmly as if we were. So much for the 
extent of the practice. And, in proof of the determination 
with which it will be persisted in, the opponents of the 
restriction urge that these marriages have increased since 
the passing of the late Act. Upon what proof the assertion 
rests we are not aware, but if the fact be so, we think it 
may be accounted for by ignorance, rather than contempt 
of the law. An ignorance which, strange as it may appear, 
might have been generated by that very Act: not by that 
part of it which is impugned, but that which is less com- 


Marriage with Deceased JVife y s Sister. 61 

plained of, viz., the clause bestowing validity on the mar¬ 
riages then existing. Now the mischief of that clause lay in 
this, that people are very apt to take the law from visible 
examples of it. Every such union, therefore, was an ocular 
proof, for the neighbourhood, of its validity in that case. 
“ Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so are brother and sister, and 
their marriage is good,” would be the prominent fact, the 
ground of the validity, viz., as prior to such a date (1835), 
would not always go along with it. And from ignorance of 
the law the example would be generalized into a validity 
of all marriages. This unlucky anomaly existed not before 
that Act, and its influence is of course yearly decreasing 
with the dropping off of those whose union it sanctioned. 
That any very strong feeling prevails in favour of such 
unions we deny, or that, with the knowledge of the law 
clearly brought home to them, any great number of persons 
would nevertheless set the law at defiance, and involve 
their family in the consequences; for the same regard to 
offspring, which, as regards the first marriage, is urged as 
a motive for such unions, will operate to prevent them 
when the result will be disastrous to the fruit of the 
second. 

Of resistance to the law, if properly promulgated, we 
entertain little apprehension, but a great deal for the evil 
consequences to the purity and the harmony of domestic 
life, and the morals of the people generally from a legisla¬ 
tive sanction of such marriages. 

The opponents of the restriction dwell on one scene of 
the drama, viz., that which opens with the decease of the 
wife. We think what precedes it is equally deserving of 
attention, viz., the relation subsisting between the parties 
during her life-time, and the more as always preceding, 
though not always followed by, the other; for it is not 
every married woman with sisters who dies, and has her 
place supplied by one of them. Now, where these rela- 


62 Marriage with Deceased Wife's Sister. 

tions subsist, liow much free and unrestrained intercourse 
between the parties contributes to domestic happiness is 
too obvious to need insisting on. The footing a man stands 
on with his wife’s sister, being nearly as familiar as with 
his own, will best be preserved as innocent by approxi¬ 
mating to the same feeling, in which no unimportant 
ingredient is the impossibility of marriage between them. 
Such a barrier is best for all parties. Best for the wife, 
whose enjoyment of her sister’s society, which can only be 
perfect if also agreeable to the husband, may then not be 
dashed with the thought of its being too agreeable, and 
that she perhaps with waning health, waning attractions, 
impaired temper, may contrast unfavourably with her 
possible successor. Those who know anything of human 
nature, must know that without great circumspection in 
the husband and in the sister, as well as strength and 
evenness of mind in the wife, such cases would not unfre- 
quently occur; while the union of these qualities is neither 
very common nor very easy of exercise, without resulting 
in reserve and restraint. And this where no improper 
feelings have arisen; but that such should arise is surely 
neither so improbable nor so unimportant as not to make 
it desirable that the strongest impediment be placed in 
their way. And what stronger impediment than the 
impossibility of such feelings ever being gratified in the 
one only way, in which a woman, who had any virtue left, 
would permit herself to think of them—viz., marriage at a 
future day ? And if she have no virtue left, then allowing 
such a marriage is a premium for misconduct. No greater 
palladium against weakness in the woman than this re¬ 
straint, or against want of principle in the husband. 
Nothing more calculated to prevent lawful feelings growing 
into the unlawful, and nip illicit inclination in the outset. 
And how important is this none will doubt who looks well 
into our nature; for no path so surely leads to crime as 


On the Homeric Poems . 


63 


that which at first appears to run parallel with virtue— 
and the strongest minds have been found unable to check 
themselves mid-career in a downward course, when the 
weakest might have stood firm at the outset. 

Our limits forbid our pushing the inquiry to the extent 
it admits. The more, however, we consider it, the more 
we are persuaded of the ill consequences of repealing this 
law, that it would afford opportunity to the unprincipled, 
be fraught with peril to the weak, and, through the mis¬ 
conduct of some, render the position of all open to surmise, 
uneasy and equivocal. 

T. E. Coun. 


VI. 

ON THE HOMERIC POEMS.* 

[May, 1850.] 

HOUGHT is imperishable. High matter this 
for reflection, if rightly considered, but other¬ 
wise very apt to lead to what seems endowed 
with almost equal vitality—error ; for it is not 
every collocation of letters, nor grouping them into words 
and sentences, that is to be dignified with that appellation. 
These are the trappings, the husk, the body, if you will, 
galvanically susceptible of motion, though the soul, the 
thought, be clean out of them. Nor again, when we speak 
of the indestructibility of thought, must we confound 
thought with the form it is clothed in, the body which 
enshrines it. The words, in which thought finds utterance, 
wax old, and wither, and drop out of men’s remembrance, 
while the thought itself, which was the life of them, seeking 

* “Thoughts on the Homeric Poems and British Ballads. No. 2 
of The People's Classical Library. Sherwood, Paternoster Row.” 






64 


On the Homeric Poems. 


fresh combinations, lives on through a long course of 
intellectual metempsychosis, so to speak, ages without 
end. It is with the offspring of man’s mind, as with 
himself, the imperishable or soul-part of it withdraws not 
the other from the law of its being, gradual decay. The 
Enochs and Elijahs of his race, that are bodily translated 
beyond reach of dissolution, be but few: few also are the 
instances in which thought is found to communicate its 
immortality to the form in which it first walked this world 
of ours. 

Among these few, three names stand out conspicuous, 
Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. Like beacon-towers, 
they fling their broad light across the weltering waves of 
time, that restless rage around, other things devouring, 
but beating in vain against these, that stand scatheless as 
at the first. To their winged thoughts, in the very words 
they first found utterance, men to this hour listen en¬ 
tranced, and will scarce brook to hear them in any other. 
For with all three, with our many-minded man, with the 
stern Florentine, and the more joyous, large-souled Greek, 
it is the same. Their thoughts have an utterance all their 
own; a music, that any the slightest change must mar, 
though too robust withal, even under the roughest hand¬ 
ling, to show other than pre-eminently beautiful and 
great. Conspicuous, too, in all three, is that inseparable 
mark of genius of the first order, throwing off its great 
works, as bright emanations, without any apparent effort. 
Nor is this shown in the mere ordering or conduct only of 
their great poems, or in their affluence of thought and 
imagery, but conspicuously in the language also, which, 
though it be of words that burn, is always natural, easy, 
idiomatic; the right word in the right place; and seeming 
to rise so spontaneously from the subject, that the reader is 
wont to fancy that, had the thought been his, he could not 
but have fallen into the same expression. 


On the Homeric Poems. 


65 


But this power of performing great things with apparent 
ease, he it observed, by way of caution to our younger 
readers, does not imply that they could be achieved without 
labour somewhere. Such facility is not given but to minds 
of gigantic strength and proportions, and even to those 
only as the fruit of much labour, and efforts manifold 
previously undergone, of which, this, their crowning 
achievement in each case, may be considered the expres¬ 
sion. Their performance is before us, but not their 
training. With their earliest essays we are unacquainted. 
We see the eagle in his pride of place, and careering at 
will, on indefatigable wings; but saw him not when thrust 
from the nest, with untried pinions, in his first wrestlings 
with the vernal breeze, 

“ Vernique jam nimbis remotis 
Insolitos docuere nisus 
Venti paventem.” 

Plunge in the sea where you will, it is everywhere salt. 
Take these great poets where you will, though they may 
vary in tone and colour, they everywhere savour of them¬ 
selves. Whether he stoop or rise, Shakespeare is always 
Shakespeare, and Dante still himself, and Homer is Homer 
throughout. Illustration, however, is often more impres¬ 
sive than precept. Take the last of these at random. 
The Iliad is before us, lying open at the third book. 
Observe of this book, how naturally it grows out of the 
incidents of the preceding. The hostile armies in face of 
each other, the beautiful episode of the single combat of 
Paris and Menelaus, with the circumstances attending it, 
including Helen’s description of the various chiefs that 
Priam asks her about (one of the sweetest incidents by 
the way, and most picturesque of the kind to be met with 
anywhere), are all made to succeed each other in the most 
natural way possible. And here it behoves young poets to 
take especial note that there is nothing forced, nothing 

F 


66 


On the Homeric Poems . 


arbitrary about Iiomer : everything arises as of itself, no¬ 
thing lugged in. They, therefore, if ever tempted to stick 
incidents in, whereby, as on pegs, to hang what they think 
some delicious writing, would do well to pause. They are 
on a road which leads not to poetic excellence, and, what¬ 
ever else may be said of it, of this they may be sure, that 
such handling is no mark of power. And in poetry, espe¬ 
cially, be it remembered that “to be weak is to be 
miserable.” 

Few, we take it, but must be struck with the graphic 
manner in which the two armies are contrasted. We have 
them before us, the Trojans with clang and noise, o^vi9es 
ag; the Achseans in silence, determined and careful to co¬ 
operate in their movements— ’laav cnyy /xevecx, ttve'iovtes 
’A%aiol, ’Ey 9vfx,a fXEfxocans aAels/xsi/ aXM^oiaiv. 

How characteristic of human nature in general, and 
the species ladies’ man in particular, that bravado sortie of 
Paris! Of human nature, that leads the gifted in one 
particular to try his hand on every other, and of the 
species supra dicta, to think that success with the women 
might be very agreeably, and as easily, diversified by 
triumphs in the rough arena of men. There is something 
richly absurd in the breadth of the man’s challenge. A 
Greek would not be enough, but the antagonist must be 
picked out of the best and bravest of the Achseans.* 
The extravagance of the pretension is perfectly intelligi¬ 
ble, on the uniform success attending his achievements in 
one line prompting his flying at the highest quarry in 
another and totally opposite. This is what has ever oc¬ 
curred, and will occur to the world’s end. This made 
Richelieu jealous of a literary reputation, and Cicero put 
up for a poet. Success in its nature generates presump¬ 
tion, and presumption pushes anywhere, and everywhere, 

* This is inconsiderately put. He was responsible for the chal¬ 
lenge, but not for its form or scope. 


On the Homeric Poems. 


67 


to whatever point of the compass. Nor is it too much to 
say it ensures its own discomfiture. In the instance before 
us, that discomfiture was in every respect complete. The 
man who put down this our challenger of the best of all 
the Greeks, was but a third or fourth rate warrior among 
those Greeks, and, moreover, the man he had most 
injured, and before whom he owed it to his leman at home 
not to appear at disadvantage. 

Note how to the life Menelaus’ demeanour is given. 
And the comparison of a lion lighting on a large prey, 
stag or wild goat, is, as ever in Homer, complete to denote 
his sensations, as those of Paris at the sight of his rival 
are hit off by the similitude of one that unawares lights on 
a serpent. Nor is the account of the bearing of Paris up 
to the moment of his catching sight of Menelaus without 
its humour. Menelaus perceives him going in front the 
array with long strides— /xuupa, fiificovTa. Fancy him 
striding up and down, flourishing his two darts, quite 
unconscious that Menelaus was eyeing him with grim 
delight; and no sooner catches a glimpse of him than he 
falters, and retires into the thick of his companions in 
arms. Hector’s objurgation on his cowardly behaviour is 
followed by an answer that we have always looked on with 
admiration. We know not if it has occurred to others, 
as it did to ourselves on first perusal of Hector’s speech, 
to pause, and, before reading farther, endeavour to frame 
an answer to it, and, after turning the matter about little to 
our own satisfaction, then, and not before, see what Paris 
makes of his very ill case. We confess that Homer’s 
wonderful dexterity in the speeches he puts into the 
mouths of the actors in his great drama, so pat to the 
character and to the occasion, never struck us more forci¬ 
bly. The graceful answer of Paris so meets the points, as 
far as they can be met, that he rises fifty per cent, in our 
regard. We see at once, that there is not indeed the stuff 


68 


On the Homeric Poems. 


in him heroes are made of; but we see that his excellence 
is not merely outside. His ready wit and graceful tongue ex¬ 
plain, in some degree, why Helen should quit all and follow 
him across the sea. His apology for his own character is 
blended with a just appreciation of his brother’s excellence, 
that must have gone far to smoothe the ruffled chief, whom 
we fancy smiling grimly at the compliment conveyed in the 
comparison of his untiring valour to the axe hewing timber 
unweariedly, and adding strength to the hand that wields 
it. And he and we almost feel he had scolded too hard. 
Indeed, the management of the character of Paris has ever 
struck us throughout as exhibiting the highest skill. 
Under circumstances which should incur contempt, it is so 
contrived that we do not despise him, and, consequently, 
among other advantages, the dignity of Helen’s character, 
about which the poet seems careful, is maintained, which 
could not have been had he assigned her a contemptible lover. 

* Among the excellencies which characterize the “ Ho¬ 
meric Poems,” is one which we believe to be the inse¬ 
parable quality of all real transcendent power, the total 
absence of the arbitrary. Like Shakespeare; yes, and 
like Dante, though at first blush this be less apparent, 
forging nothing, but building upon ground firm and solid, 
already existing in the minds and belief of his audience. 
In Homer this is nowhere more conspicuous than where 
we might least expect to find it, in his management of 
what is called the machinery of his poem—the superna¬ 
tural part of it. Here the sterling common sense and 
regard for the probable in the old Greek is apparent. Any 
one that comes fresh from reading the “ Fairy Tales ” and 
that bewitching labyrinth of wonders, the “ Arabian 
Nights,”f where enchanters on fiery dragons, and genii 

* Upon the principle of doing what we will with our own, I have 
transposed a large passage beginning here to the preface to my 
“ Iliad,” in Spenserian stanza, published in 1854. 

f We would not be misunderstood. It is an ill spirit that cushions 


On the Homeric Poems. 


69 


are seen contending together, or dragging reluctant prin¬ 
cesses through the air in the sight of multitudes, would 
be egregiously in error if he expected to find in the 
“ Homeric Poems ” the gods appearing in propria per¬ 
sona in face of all present and observable by all as birds 
would be flying over their heads. There is nothing of the 
sort. Nothing occurs to contradict the experience of a 
Greek auditor of these poems, or lead him to say that the 
order of things had become changed in his time. Through¬ 
out the poems, so far as our recollection serves, the pre¬ 
sence of the gods is concealed from the many, and vouch¬ 
safed only to the few. The interference of the gods in 
men’s affairs, and of contending factions among them, 
was the common belief of the Greek. That some indi¬ 
viduals had privilege, more or less frequent, of intercourse 
with the invisible world, was also their common belief, and 
has survived under modified forms, as a popular belief, to 
this day. The multitude never saw Jove, but only his 
eagle in the air, or his lightning in the clouds. Minerva 
sent to pacify Achilles was visible to him only; and on 
another occasion was to the throng but the herald be¬ 
speaking silence to the speech of her favourite Ulysses. 
Iris bringing the news of the Greeks’ approach was but 
Polytes, one of Priam’s sons, to the many, though Hector, 
whom he chiefly addressed, knew the goddess under his 
brother’s garb; and probably Priam did so too, or he 

its love of one thing on hatred of another. Neither, in our enthu¬ 
siastic love for the superior excellencies of the Greek bard, are we 
blind to the inferior, but yet high excellencies of another, and alto¬ 
gether different kind. We yield not to the warmest admirers of the 
“ Arabian Nights ” in our appreciation of that truly unique production, 
the fascination of which will last with our race, while its excellence is 
shown in the many lagging attempts at imitation. But perhaps not 
the least, because involuntary, tribute to their superiority is afforded 
by Count Hamilton’s work, which, written in derision, and for the 
purpose of showing how easily they could be written, proves that 
the author misunderstood what he intended to ridicule. 


70 


On the Homeric Poems. 


might have bestowed something of rebuke upon his seeming 
son’s rather unceremonious address. 

By this method the aid of the marvellous was obtained 
without violation of a Pagan's sense of the probable. By 
this means also a high and glorious order was placed at 
the poet’s disposal with which to invest those he would 
exalt, engaging the imagination far beyond all titles, 
orders, ranks of nobility, or what not, at the disposal of a 
modern. The epic heroes are as knights of a glorious 
investiture, no less than the gift of communion with gods. 
How enhancing to the heroic character of Achilles, who 
turns and knows Minerva straight, so dread the gaze 
gleamed from her eyes, evidently not the first time he 
had seen her. And Ulysses again, how frequent his inter¬ 
course with the goddess that he should know her by her 
voice! Yea, much and deep converse had been vouch¬ 
safed that many-minded man, and the accents of the patron 
deity were familiar music to his ears. 

But the theme is leading us away. Illue uncle abii 
recleo —we will return to our subject, viz. the heading of 
this paper, a suggestive little tract entitled “ Thoughts on 
the Homeric Poems and the British Ballads,” in which 
the two are compared together with great ability in various 
points of view, of which one series is well summed in the 
author’s words that “ the ‘ Iliad ’ and the ‘ Odyssey ’ were 
the instructors of the people, the ‘ British Ballads ’ were 
the voices of the people,” and another in that paragraph : 
“ Our ballads are continually reminding us that they were 
written in ages long since, when manners prevailed of 
which there is at present scarcely a trace remaining. 
Homer in the elucidation of fable expressed manners, hut 
they are the manners of universal, of unperverted nature. 
Homer has nothing to do with time or place, but as back¬ 
grounds or foregrounds to his pictures, and all times and 
all places harmonize with his pictures.” 


On the Homeric Poems. 


n 


On the whole, however, in the writer’s enthusiasm for 
Homer, wherewith we sympathize to the full, he has borne 
rather too hard upon our ballads, which have always been 
especial favourites with us. Sufficient justice is not done 
to the influence they have exercised both directly and 
indirectly. In them a taste for the simple, and natural, 
and genuine, was kept alive in our poetry, when it was 
fast dying out in departments of more pretension. Vapid 
insipidity, artificial and lifeless, was usurping the place of 
poetry among us, and, itself the lean offspring of a 
meagre parent, the conventional court-ruffle system of 
Louis Quatorze, imported with the Restoration, threatened 
in its leanness to devour up the fair well-favoured kine 
before them clean out of remembrance. And long and 
dreary was the poetic famine, until the land groaned again 
by reason thereof. And eagerly did men quit chewing of 
husks, and rush like hunger-bitten folk upon the real 
bread when flung in their way. The appearance of 
“ Percy’s Reliques ” was an era in this sense; it was the 
golden news that men were henceforth to feed as men, 
that husks, and saw-dust, and other wretched contrivances 
for the real thing, were to be no more. Whoever will be 
at the pains of running over in his mind the authors in 
vogue before the appearance of Dr. Percy’s work, and 
those who have sprung up since, and noting how little that 
collection has in common with the former class, and how 
much with the latter, will not be slow to appreciate the 
influence of the “ Reliques.” 

That work was the first cannon pointed at the Bastile of 
French conventionalism in which our poetry lay groaning, 
and let in freedom and light and life to the captive. Not 
that this effect was either intended, or immediately felt. 
Men grow up in such worship of the idols around them, 
that be it a Jupiter fresh from the hands of a Phidias, or 
some uncouth shapeless carving of a South Sea islander, 


72 


On the Homeric Poems. 


they equally shrink from laying rude hands on what they 
have been accustomed to revere. Such is the force of 
custom. And its force verily was heavy upon that gene¬ 
ration, at least upon the notabilities thereof. The good 
bishop himself was fain to bear him apologetically for con¬ 
ferring the greatest boon, that, under the circumstances, 
could have been bestowed upon our literature, and sing a 
sort of recantation in the shape of certain ballads in the 
approved vapid empty tlien-in-vogue style. Nothing but 
the force of custom could, we think, have shut the thorough 
honest English heart of Johnson, with his love of the 
genuine, against our ballad literature. 

However, the work was achieved and is achieving, and 
nowhere has its influence been more felt than in Germany, 
where, with their usual appreciation of all that is excellent 
among us, the Reliques were received with eagerness, not 
only incorporating with the poetic mind of that country, 
but setting them upon a similar field of enterprise among 
the rich ballads of their own land. And great is the 
harvest literature thence is reaping. But our oxen are not 
for ploughing up that field; turning away therefore we 
will content us with observing that the ballad literature of 
a country ought always to be favourably regarded by her 
people, for it is the genuine offspring of themselves; from 
them it arose and in their hearts and feelings it hath its life 
and being. “ Give me the making of the songs of a 
country,” said Fletcher of Saltoun, “ and let who will have 
the making of her laws.” It is in this influence on the hearts 
of the people that resides its power of preserving a precious 
remnant of the genuine and the natural when the great of 
the earth bow down to Baal, to the arbitrary and the 
factitious. The poetry of a country has never fallen below 
hope of redemption wliile it possesses a good ballad litera¬ 
ture so preserved. 


T. E. Court. 


The County Courts' Jurisdiction. 


73 


VII. 

ON THE EXTENSION OF THE COUNTY 
COURTS’ JURISDICTION. 

[June, 1850.] 

ESPECT for the law has been for centuries a 
sort of instinct with the English people, a dis¬ 
tinguishing feature of their character, of which 
they have just reason to be proud. Even in 
the early struggles for liberty under the Norman monarchs, 
their language was always that the law should be allowed 
its course, that none he against it touched of life, or limb, 
or worldly goods. This strong attachment to their legal 
institutions, a thorough Saxon feeling, was the result of 
their having laws of their own, and of native growth, whose 
origin who shall tell ? forming the hulk of what we designate 
the Common Law. Other European nations have been dif¬ 
ferently circumstanced. The civil law, that magnificent 
and luxuriant growth of Roman polity, where it gained the 
ascendancy, was yet exotic in its character, and, harmo¬ 
nizing very little with the institutions of the northern tribes, 
either displaced them altogether, or coexisted in a painful 
state of contention and strife.'*' Feudalism and the genius 
of the civil law were too antagonistic to allow of any 
perfect union between them. Feudalism and our Anglo- 
Saxon institutions on the contrary were germane to one 

* It is manifest that the civil law could not be indigenous to the 
Teutonic nations that adopted it, nor of the southern populations can 
it be considered of native growth as regarded the various tribes, 
each with their own laws, that settled down in what is, after one of 
them, now called France; nor Spain, with her Gothic institutions and 
her “ fueros,” and if Italy may, in virtue of her Roman lineage, 
claim the imperial laws as her ancient patrimony, that claim would 





74 


On the Extension of the 

another, at root possibly identical, and springing from 
one common origin. The aggrieved Anglo-Saxon frank¬ 
lin, therefore, and the injured Norman noble might 
well join in one common demand, challenging nothing 
new, but that the law be recognized and respected. 
Not, like the goaded peasantry of continental outbreaks, 
plunging into every excess, nor asking liberty and respect 
of person and property as some new privilege, but orderly 
in their movements, and looking on good laws, good as re¬ 
garded the exigencies of the time, as an Englishman’s 
ancient patrimony and undoubted birthright. The favour 
the civil law met with abroad, and the stern opposi¬ 
tion it encountered here, may be partly attributed to its 
bearings on the civil and political liberties of the subject, 
of which that maxim —quod principi placuit lecjis habet 
vigorem —of the prince’s pleasure having the force of law, 
was no inadequate expression : a maxim which the spirit of 
feudalism everywhere indignantly spurned, and in Eng¬ 
land happily with success.* 

We should grieve to think this wholesome reverence for 
the laws was on the wane amongst us, whether from pre¬ 
judice or indifference, or through a superficial view of 
foreign systems, of which the plausibilities strike the 

hardly extend to the Lombards, and other tribes that forced a foot¬ 
ing on her classic soil. 

* It has always appeared to us a superficial view of the subject 
that arraigns the feudal system, and the polities thence derived, as 
belonging to a different state of society from the present, and therefore 
not harmonizing with it, and yet at the same time admits the claims 
of the civil law in that particular without question. As if the 
Pandects and Digest, the Constitutions and the Code of Justinian, 
belonged not to an age and state of society widely different from 
this. In fact, both systems were alien to the present age and its 
social relations, and the true question is as to their respective capa¬ 
bilities of expanding and accommodating themselves to the growing 
requirements of each succeeding age. And in this point of com¬ 
parison the feudal system has, in this country, shown itself anything 
but inferior to its more august rival. 


75 


County Courts’ Jurisdiction. 

stranger, while their practical ill workings are reserved for 
those who live under them. For ourselves we think that, 
of all things that task the human mind, satisfactory law¬ 
making is the most difficult; that laws to be of any worth 
should be suited to the peculiarities of the people they are 
meant for. And we very much doubt if it be possible to 
give a code, freshly and in the lump, that shall answer 
that character. Whatever the energies and capabilities of 
any one man, or generation of men, they can ill afford to 
make tabula rasa of all that has been before. The French 
made the experiment on an extensive scale in their first 
revolution, and, in proportion to their success, have reaped 
the appropriate harvest of crudeness and confusion, civil and 
political. Time is an excellent and all but indispensable 
ally in the work of legislation. And that body of laws 
will be the most likely to square with the genius and wants 
of a people, which has grown up with themselves, which 
they have altered, taken from, and added to, law by law, 
as occasion required. The nation, therefore, like ours, 
that is possessed of such, would do well to prize the pos¬ 
session, uncouth though it be in some respects, and un¬ 
shapely considered as a system. For symmetry a la Sieyes 
we have little regard, holding it to be a very poor matter, 
wdiether in codes or constitutions. 

Change and alter would we wherever, and as often as, 
change and alteration grew requisite; such gradual adjust¬ 
ment to the wants of the times having indeed formed our 
legal history from the beginning. But these changes, let 
them not be in a spirit of impatience, as undervaluing a 
priceless inheritance, nor from any undue envy of or 
eagerness to imitate foreign systems, being well assured 
that few are the inconveniences in ours but may be paral¬ 
lelled in the best among them, not excepting the Code 
Napoleon itself, with its camel-load of commentary. Above 
all should such changes be discussed in entire freedom from 


76 


On the Extension of the 

two very serious prejudices, which meet us at the threshold 
of the enquiry, and which are more common than we could 
wish, or than some would acknowledge, lurking, as we fear 
they do oftentimes, unconsciously to the parties themselves, 
at the bottom of their reasonings upon the subject. One 
is, that the laws of a great country can be few and simple ; 
the other, which is akin to it, that the knowledge of them 
can be practically placed within reach of the bulk of the 
community. These prejudices we should have thought a 
very little reflection had sufficed to dispel: for what can he 
more obvious than that, so long as men’s actions are to be 
regulated by laws antecedently laid down, these must be 
framed to meet the possible contingencies of the class of 
actions to which they refer, and must of necessity grow in 
number and complexity as men’s actions and their relations 
with one another became multifarious and intricate ? 
There is no help for it. If simplicity and paucity of 
regulation be insisted on, social intercourse must propor¬ 
tionately cease to be regulated by antecedent laws, and be 
left to depend on the discretion of the presiding judge. 
But who would accept the commodity at the price ? Sim¬ 
plicity and prompt decision at the sole arbitrament of a 
judge may be melodramatic enough, read well in a story, 
or look well on the stage, but in life the reflective man will 
none of it. The Cadi’s law is good or bad according as 
the Cadi himself is the one or other, and, in either case, 
suited only to a barbarous, and almost nomade state of 
society, altogether irreconcileable with the requirements of 
a higher civilization, where the spirit of liberty brooks not 
that the magistrate improvise the law, and so usurp upon 
the functions of the legislature. 

In such a country as ours, the laws cannot be few, nor, 
from their very number, and the multifarious objects they 
embrace, other than complex, nor consequently other than 
an object of separate study, a science, in fact, the know- 


77 


County Courts’ Jurisdiction. 

ledge of which can no more fall within reach of men gene¬ 
rally than any other science, business, trade, or occupation. 
Nor is it necessary that it should. For it is no more 
necessary, because a man may have need of law, that 
therefore he should know law, than that he should turn 
carpenter and builder, learn to kill sheep and oxen, bake 
bread, or take to tailoring, because he must be housed, and 
clothed, and fed. It is enough that he know where to get 
these things for his money when he requires them. It is 
enough that the law be such that a practical knowledge of 
it be within the reach of its professors. In which par¬ 
ticular our system yields to none, but on the contrary, as 
we shall have occasion to notice in the sequel, possesses 
facilities not to be found elsewhere. 

With these preliminary observations on what seems to 
us the spirit in which changes in our laws should be con¬ 
ducted, we proceed to the subject of our paper, the probable 
effects of the proposed extension of the County Courts’ 
jurisdiction from twenty pounds to fifty. In which enquiry 
those of our readers who find us more than usually dull, we 
trust will shift the blame from us to the subject; and to 
those who find our sentiments unpalatable we would urge 
our conviction, and the importance of the matter, which 
alike forbid silence or disguise. 

The necessity for good laws involves the no less im¬ 
perative necessity of providing a fitting medium through 
which they may be made available to the community. 
The constitution of tribunals, and the regulation of their 
mode of procedure, have accordingly been the subject of 
deep and anxious consideration with legislators in all ages. 
The question before us, while it more immediately bears on 
this subject, is yet not confined to it, but indirectly em¬ 
braces a variety of other topics, in the examination of which 
we shall not tie ourselves to any precise method, but deal 
with them as they occur to us. 


78 


On the Extension of the 

The advantages the County Courts hold out are that 
they administer cheap justice, speedy justice, justice at 
every man’s door. The last of which, besides being, in 
these days of easy transit, and wide-spread transactions, of 
less importance than when the idea was first broached, is 
moreover substantially effected by the judges in their 
circuits ; in the intervals whereof the County Courts being 
available is an advantage falling more properly under the 
head of speedy justice. The claims of these courts there¬ 
fore to preference, rest on cheapness and speed—as adjuncts 
of justice , however; for if that be wanting, as it too often 
may, the cheapness and the speed are worse than nothing. 
Let us see how they make good these claims as a ground 
for extending their jurisdiction. 

Our first objection to such extension of their jurisdiction 
is their incompetency to its satisfactory exercise, arising 
from what is inseparable from the court, its mode of pro¬ 
cedure. Which mode of procedure is objectionable because 
all that usually intervenes from the writ to the record, the 
subject of frequent and long deliberations between the 
plaintiff and defendant respectively, and their legal advisers 
in each stage of progress, is, through lack of written plead¬ 
ings, condensed into one interview before the judge at the 
trial, on whom so much devolves in addition to his own 
proper duty of decision, and whose functions are conse¬ 
quently rendered very difficult, often impossible to discharge 
in a satisfactory manner. Every lawyer will understand 
and appreciate this, but for others it may be well to give a 
short sketch of what takes place from the commencement 
of a suit to the trial in a superior court. 

The first feature in the business, and which there is no 
evading, is the client’s statement to his attorney. Touch¬ 
ing which, all, who know anything of the matter, know 
that few professional duties demand more care, vigilance, 
circumspection, and skill, than this of collecting his own 


79 


County Courts’ Jurisdiction. 

case from the client’s mouth. The shortest mode, experience 
proves, is to let him tell his own story his own way, without 
attempting short cuts, which mostly result either in losing 
some important facts, or else in the necessity of beginning 
over again, as judges of local courts, when this unjudicial 
duty falls to their lot, not unfrequently find. When the 
attorney has accomplished his task, and completed his 
client’s frequently defective narrative, by pertinent ques¬ 
tions, that elicit circumstances which to the party seemed 
trivial, but are yet vital in their bearings on the case, 
should he have doubts on the course to be pursued, he 
draws up a statement embodying all the pith, relieved from 
the irrelevancies, of his client’s communication. This he 
submits, with appropriate observations and queries, to his 
pleader, to advise on the propriety, as the case may be, of 
bringing an action, or defending it. 

On which interview with his client we may observe that 
it is best fitted for an attorney’s office, and wholly unsuited 
to a judge’s tribunal, with whose functions it squares very 
ill, but who, nevertheless, goes through it in a fashion as 
often as a party, unskilled in law and it may be otherwise 
ignorant, presents himself before him to plead his own 
cause. 

But to return to our attorney, whom we will suppose 
concerned for the plaintiff, the pleader having advised an 
action, the writ is used, and an appearance by the other 
side duly entered. The next proceeding on the plaintiff’s 
part is to declare, as it is called, that is, deliver to the 
defendant, or his attorney, a written document called a 
declaration. This, which in cases presenting difficulty, is 
usually prepared by the pleader, contains a legal statement 
of the plaintiff’s cause of action—such a statement that, 
assuming the facts to be true, they show a right to recover 
against the defendant. One quality of which is particu¬ 
larly to be observed here, viz., its effect of precluding any 


80 On the Extension of the 

further latitude of statement, for in no subsequent stage of 
the proceedings will the plaintiff be admitted to make any 
that the declaration will not support. To the defendant, 
therefore, it serves as a sort of map of the plaintiff’s de¬ 
mands against him, beyond the boundaries of which his 
adversary will not be permitted to wander, and beyond 
which he has consequently nothing to meet. This declara¬ 
tion furnishes matter of consideration, often very deep and 
anxious, to the defendant’s professional adviser: who 
examines first, whether on the face of it, assuming the 
facts to be true, the plaintiff shows a cause of action, and 
whether, as the case may be, he shall object, that from 
the facts as stated there results no legal obligation on him, 
or deny some one or other of the facts, or not denying the 
facts, nor the legal inference from them, allege fresh 
matter not there detailed, which either prevented the 
obligation arising, or subsequently removed it, as, for 
example, illegality in the contract, or infancy, or coverture, 
or duress of the person of defendant in the first case, or 
release or discharge and satisfaction in the second. These 
answers, of which to each demand or count of the plaintiff’s 
declaration, the defendant may, by leave of the court, make 
two or more, are drawn up in legal form by his pleader, 
written on paper, and called his pleas, and delivered to the 
plaintiff, to whom they serve as a map of his adversary’s 
defence, who, whatever his possibilities were before, cannot 
go from them now. Doing so would be a departure, and 
break down the case. So of each subsequent proceeding. 
The whole of which pleadings on both sides, when com¬ 
plete, are transcribed in order and at length on parchment, 
and called the record. This record is placed before the judge 
at the trial, and is the foundation of his judicial functions 
in that suit—of which, for our present purpose, one thing 
is to be especially noted, and that is, how effectually this 
record precludes all rambling statement, to and fro, flying 


81 


County Courts' Jurisdiction. 

off from the subject, and into foreign matters, to the great 
perplexity of the judge, so common in tribunals where 
there is no record, as in the county courts. 

There is another advantageous feature which distin¬ 
guishes our superior courts from every other, and is pre¬ 
eminently calculated to simplify the judge’s functions, and 
give certainty and precision to his judgment, by relieving 
his mind from the consideration of irrelevant matter. We 
allude to our system of pleading, which, in another bearing, 
we have touched upon above, but not in the point of view 
to which we shall now request the reader’s attention. 

Before any tribunal can adjudicate between the litigant 
parties, it is manifest that, out of their respective allega¬ 
tions, the subject for decision has to be in some way or 
other ascertained. In foreign tribunals, for the most part, 
the parties are allowed to make their statements pretty 
much at large, without reference to eliciting the precise 
question in dispute. Previously to the court coming to a 
decision, therefore, the different statements on both sides 
(which are reduced to writing, and in France called pieces) 
have to be carefully weighed and compared together; the 
points that are admitted, and those that are immaterial, 
eliminated, in order to select the point for decision. This 
selection in some is privately made in the first place, and 
partially by the parties each for himself, in preparing his 
proofs, and, of those presented by the parties again, vir¬ 
tually effected by the judge in considering them for judg¬ 
ment ; in others the point for decision is selected by an act 
of the court, or its officer, and judicially announced before 
proof or trial. Both methods testify to the high impor¬ 
tance attached to the judge having aid in ascertaining the 
points for decision, although the success of the contrivers 
has not been equal to their anxiety in attaining what has 
been perfectly accomplished by the common law of Eng¬ 
land, which, in the words of Serjeant Stephen, “ differs 

G 


82 


On the Extension of the 

from both methods, by obliging the parties so to plead as 
to develope some question by the effect of tlieir own allega¬ 
tions, and to agree upon this question as the point for 
decision in the cause.” 

The superiority of our method is sufficiently obvious, 
and is strikingly illustrated by an anecdote of the cele¬ 
brated Pothier, one of the brightest ornaments that ever 
adorned the forensic annals of any age or country, whose 
labours have long acquired a European celebrity, and 
whose writings have had the high compliment paid them 
of being transferred in large quantities verbatim to the 
Code Napoleon. On one occasion, after deciding a cause, 
he had reason to think he had failed in giving its due con¬ 
sideration to a certain piece among those presented by the 
losing party. The effect upon his mind was such that he 
compensated the man out of his own pocket. This error 
of this most able judge, whose anxiety to judge aright was 
evinced by his noble method of correcting the mistake, 
from whence did it arise? From having to find what 
points the case presented, as well as to decide them. But 
this mistake could not have occurred to one of our judges 
of the superior courts, because the points for decision, 
whether of law or fact, are raised on the pleadings by the 
parties themselves, without the intervention of the judge. 
Such, then, being the superior fitness of our higher courts, 
shall we withdraw a majority of cases from their cognizance, 
in order to transfer them to a tribunal where the judge is 
under Pothier’s disadvantage of having to hunt out the 
points for decision, with the additional difficulty of doing 
so, not from written documents, that he may con over once 
and again, but from a crowd of confused and conflicting 
verbal statements out of the mouths of the parties ? In 
other words, shall we extend the jurisdiction of the county 
courts from twenty pounds to fifty ? 

We have sketched the proceedings where they reach to 


83 


County Courts ’ Jurisdiction. 

trial, but it would be a serious error to suppose that any 
great proportion of cases go so far. Few, in fact, advance 
beyond the writ. It is stated that of writs issued for trade 
debts, not four in the hundred ever reach trial. While, be 
it remembered, it is only where they do that the county 
courts’ procedure presents their sole pretended points of 
advantageous comparison, viz., speed and cheapness.* In 
truth nine-tenths of the law disputes of this country receive 
a satisfactory adjustment in special pleaders’ chambers, 
without any need of proceeding farther. And as this 
source of access to the law of the land is of great import¬ 
ance, yet little known to the public generally, although 
familar enough to their attorneys, we think a few words on 
their functions will not be inappropriate. 

The special pleader is not, as the term might lead some 
to suppose, one who necessarily pleads, or speaks in court, 
for, unless he be a barrister, he never appears there at all. 

* The court fees for a writ of summons in the superior courts, 
amount to but five shillings. In most cases payment is made shortly 
after it is served; but if the defendant disregard the writ, and de¬ 
claration be filed, and judgment signed, or if the action be settled, 
and time given by mutual arrangement under a judge’s order, the 
court fees, including execution, are under thirty shillings. The 
court fees in the county court at present for hearing a cause without 
a jury, do, with the poundage for a sum of <£'20, exceed three pounds, 
and under the scale in the new bill, would exceed six for a debt of 
£50. The proceeding also alluded to under judge’s order, is as effec¬ 
tive as a verdict, and much cheaper and quicker than you could 
obtain a verdict in the county court. 

The sums named above are court fees, exclusive of attorney’s 
charges. In the superior courts those charges are not allowed to 
exceed a fair remuneration for his trouble, and if the county courts 
fix them at less, the policy of the arrangement is very questionable. 
Whatever is needless dismiss, but it is folly to think of dispensing 
with essential services, and equal folly to think they will long con¬ 
tinue to be properly performed for inadequate remuneration. And 
it is weak leniency to a litigant, and unjust to his opponent, to saddle 
the latter with an expense he was compelled to incur through his 
adversary’s obstinacy, or ill faith, in prosecuting a wrongful claim, or 
resisting a just one. 


84 


On the Extension of the 


And the greater portion of them are “ below the bar,” as 
it is termed, i. e. not called to the degree of barrister, 
although members of some inn of court, have kept their 
terms, and might be called if they thought expedient. 
But they refrain from doing so partly because the etiquette 
of the profession precludes a barrister from accepting less 
than a guinea fee for an opinion or drawing pleadings, 
while the hulk of the business is below that sum. But 
whether barristers or below the bar, this name of special 
pleader is derived from their drawing the pleadings or 
legal statements before alluded to in the course of a suit. 
Now, to do this properly, demands a most intimate know¬ 
ledge of the law, so far at least as relates to his depart¬ 
ment—the assiduous study of which is, consequently, a 
pleader’s first duty, and remains indeed his life’s business 
during his professional career—a career by no means 
strewn with roses. No lawyer’s can he, with his labour of 
Sisyphus, up hill ever, a profession that is always shifting, 
always suffering some change, and which he has conse¬ 
quently always to learn. The pleader’s is especially so. 
Every change, as it arises, he had need incorporate at once 
with his knowledge, master every statute, that “ monstrum 
horrendum, informe, ingens, cui (scepe) lumen ademptum,” 
and digest every case, as he knows not but they may enter 
into the very next pleading or opinion he is asked for—a 
vigilance the more imperative that any defect of knowledge 
in him operates more fatally than in the barrister who may 
conduct the case at the trial. This necessity for precision 
in his legal knowledge, makes the pleader a very likelv 
source from which to draw a correct opinion on the validity 
of any claim a party meditates instituting, or resisting in 
the courts of law. And pleaders are accordingly resorted 
to constantly for opinions both before suit, and in the 
course of it. In the majority of cases also they are able 
to pronounce distinctly and satisfactorily upon them; for 


85 


County Courts Jurisdiction . 

what may be very doubtful to an attorney, however skilled 
in his branch of the profession, is perfectly clear to the 
pleader, who makes these things his exclusive study, and 
who has no difficulty in furnishing satisfactory authorities 
upon what is to him a familiar point. And many an 
action is not brought at all, or being brought is not de¬ 
fended, solely from the party being enabled to get access to 
the undoubted law of his case through this valuable medium. 
In this way it is obvious how really operative the law may 
be in regulating men’s transactions, and how virtually 
available, without resorting to a court. And the reason 
why a court’s decision is not pressed for, is its being in 
such cases clearly foreseen. And being clearly foreseen, it 
were the height of folly for a party to incur the expense of 
a suit, where he knows the decision must be adverse. But 
once introduce an element of uncertainty into the business, 
make the decision of the judge doubtful to predict, either 
from difficulty of getting at the knowledge of the law, or 
from want of uniformity in the decisions, and what specu¬ 
lative litigations may not be expected to ensue, especially 
if the proceedings be cheap ! Many a suit which, as above 
alluded to, would now be refrained from in one case, or not 
opposed in the other, will be prosecuted or resisted to the 
uttermost for the chance, at a trifling penalty, of enforcing 
an unrighteous claim, or of baffling one that is just. 

Now, the foundation upon which the pleader’s ability to 
advise his client ultimately rests, lies in the constitution 
and mode of procedure in our superior courts, where the 
judges have no discretion, and assume none, to deal with 
the law otherwise than as already laid down; an enquiry 
into that being the anxious endeavour in each case, in 
order that their decisions may be conformable to it; in 
which enquiry the pleader has, by anticipation, previously 
travelled, and by the same rpad, viz., the reported cases 
already decided; for, in each several case, the same con- 


86 


On the Extension of the 

cern for ascertaining the law having always guided the 
judges, when they come to decide, it is presumable that 
their decisions will be conformable to law. And until 
over-ruled, their judgments accordingly are received as 
evidence of the law on those points. And well they may, 
since competency of tribunal and careful consideration are 
there found in highest perfection. All the law of the land 
flows through Westminster Hall, and when each disputed 
point of law is there especially argued by counsel on both 
sides, before a court numbering usually four of such judges, 
the decision cannot hut have all the solemnity that experi¬ 
ence, and gravity, and wisdom in a tribunal can bestow, 
and may well take its place among the authentic records 
of the court, to be transmitted in due course to the public 
in the reports. 

These reports, the source of the lawyer’s information, 
and a prominent feature in his library, are, we believe, 
peculiar to our system of judicature. In the civil law, 
indeed, the rescripts of the emperors, in answer to questions 
sent for their opinion, who wrote back ( rescripserunt ) 
their decision, agree with them in the single feature of an 
actual private case furnishing the occasion of them. They 
have, however, no other points of resemblance to our 
reports, which are accounts of actually mooted cases on 
law points raised in actual suits. A statement of the case 
is given in them, a summary of the proceedings (which 
are preserved at large in the record), a short abstract of 
the arguments of counsel on both sides, and of the judges’ 
reasons for their judgment,—which reports are extant in 
a regular series from the reign of Edward the Second 
inclusive. 

The substance of the back reports finds its way into the 
digests and abridgments of the law, and into the various 
text-books of its several branches. Through these, of 
course, and occasional reference, the knowledge of their 


87 


County Courts ’ Jurisdiction . 

multifarious contents is obtained. But tlie current reports 
of his own day the diligent pleader peruses, and notes 
down as they come out, which is in parts, about the 
dimensions of the “ Edinburgh,” making up a thick 
octavo volume every year. The various reports may be 
something under a dozen such volumes annually. Now, 
alter the jurisdiction of the county courts in the way pro¬ 
posed, and this source of legal knowledge will become 
well nigh extinct, and with it the functions of the special 
pleader as a sure adviser, and consequently the easy 
access to decisive law now open to the public through his 
medium. 

Nor will the decisions of the county courts ever supply 
the place of those in the superior tribunals, or like them 
exist as law, but on tlie contrary expire with the occasion 
which called them forth. For the conflicting decisions of 
some sixty county courts, of which the judges have no 
opportunity of conferring together as in Westminster 
Hall to preserve conformity, could present nothing to a 
pleader for his guidance. And were it otherwise—and 
their single-judge decisions might acquire a value denied 
to the Nisi prim rulings of abler arbiters—what reports 
would you have of a court where there are no pleadings, 
no fixity of statement whereby to test the bearings of a 
decision ? For want of which the reporter’s account of 
the points in dispute, the scope of the argument, and the 
grounds of the judge’s decision, and even the decision 
itself, would be stamped with a vague and apocryphal 
character. And even suppose that the decisions were not 
conflicting, that some threescore judges simultaneously 
sitting without conference did miraculously rule the same 
points the same way, and that the reports themselves were 
satisfactory, yet their very number would destroy their 
value. For whose iron nerves and ostrich appetite would 
encounter the reports of sixty courts each sending forth at 


88 


On the Extension of the 

least one volume per annum ? If human patience were 
equal, human force must be inadequate to the task of 
reading, digesting, and noting upwards of threescore thick 
octavo volumes yearly in addition to a lawyer’s other 
indispensable avocations. 

In truth, that invaluable stream of current reports which 
now floats the lawyer over many a shoal, would be dried 
up in a great measure from lack of business in the courts 
alone capable of properly transacting it. Not that law 
business would slack, nor decisions be otherwise than rife ; 
on the contrary, fresh points would be breaking out in long 
healed places, and firmly settled law be constantly opened 
up through the judge carrying with him only a portion of 
the legal knowledge that flows entire through Westminster 
Hall. But the decisions would be null as to any benefi¬ 
cial operation on the law, instead of each having the two¬ 
fold effect of deciding the present case, and ascertaining 
and fixing the law for the future. 

The loss of this would be keenly felt in the case of 
Acts of Parliament in a way perhaps lawyers only are 
aware of; for none but lawyers can adequately compre¬ 
hend the discomfort of a new statute before its rough 
edges are worn smooth bit by bit by a series of decisions. 
The hundred difficulties a statute raises for the one it was 
intended to remove are only too familiar to professional 
experience. Much of the difficulty is inherent in the thing 
itself, and much in the manner of making. The inherent 
difficulty is that which every man finds in framing even 
half a dozen sentences which shall not be open to various 
construction by parties bent on that object. The diffi¬ 
culty is increased when the task of composition is trans¬ 
ferred from one hand to many. Accordingly we find that 
the bill, which at its first introduction to the House, being 
the draft of one mind, possessed unity of purpose and 
intelligibility, does not long retain those qualities in its 


89 


County Courts Jurisdiction. 

progress. Members on all sides, starting from points of 
view different from the framer, will import each his little 
clause, knock out this, or insert that: and so on through 
both Houses until unity of design as well as of phraseo¬ 
logy disappears. Amendments introduced in one place 
lack something to match them in another, while parts 
remain whose every word dolefully tells of some kindred 
clause that has vanished from the original bill. And finally 
the act issues from her Majesty’s printer, as many-pur¬ 
posed as the House that passed it. It is to he wished that 
consistently with the liberties of a legislative assembly, 
some method of framing laws could be devised better than 
the present; so as to ensure at least that enactments 
inconsistent with one another, though separately good in 
themselves, shall not be brought together to fight it out in 
the champ clos of the same Act of Parliament. 

The thorny influences of statute-law on legal studies 
form no recent subject of complaint. Even Lord Coke 
lamented its bearings on a lawyer’s knowledge and cer¬ 
tainties, even though not passed by that vituperated Par¬ 
liament wherein no lawyer sat, and of which he was wont 
sneeringly to observe that it had accordingly passed not 
one good law. A story is told of his lordship and the 
Bishop of Ely playing at bowls together (for the simpli¬ 
city of those days saw nothing derogatory to the conse¬ 
quence of either dignitary in such relaxation). The 
Bishop, thinking it a good opportunity—and would we were 
often vouchsafed the like!—of drawing a little law from 
such a fountain, intimated that he had a legal question to 
ask his lordship. Whereupon Coke, who was just stooping 
to his throw, stood up and said, “ Before putting it, tell 
me, my Lord Bishop, is it a question touching the common 
law, or upon statute ? If common law, I should be ashamed 
not to answer it without reference to books, but if of sta¬ 
tute I should be ashamed to attempt it.” 


90 


On the Extension of the 

Now, if Lord Coke, the ablest lawyer this country ever 
produced, would not without reference venture to decide a 
single point of statute-law in his day, when statutes were 
few, how is an ordinary local-court judge, a barrister of 
seven years’ standing, now that statutes have grown into 
legions, to dispose of a case involving, it may be, many 
points of statute-law, in addition to common law and 
equitable ? Points, moreover, which he has then and 
there to hunt out through a mass of facts more or less 
conflicting that are flung down before him in a manner 
orderly or disorderly, as the case may be, by the con¬ 
tending parties viva voce, before him ? 

Indeed, the more we consider it, the less we shall be 
inclined to believe that cases involving much law, or com¬ 
plicated for their facts, could obtain a satisfactory decision 
in the county court constituted as that is, denuded of the 
aids and alleviations that abridge the labours, and simplify 
the task of the much more qualified judge in the superior 
court. 

The county court judge has in one point a perfectly 
new field, for which his previous habits and practice as a 
barrister do not peculiarly fit him. He perhaps, for the 
first time, when the parties plead before him in their own 
cause, finds himself called on to consider a case direct 
from the mouths of the principals, instead of their attor¬ 
neys. The novelty of unskilful statement of plaintiff 
and defendant, in their blissful ignorance of the legal 
bearings of the case, naturally prompts him continually 
to endeavour at short cuts, and direct the parties into 
this or that channel of statement. Now, lucid narrative 
in the teeth of interruption being no very general gift, 
the result commonly is to make “ confusion worse con¬ 
founded,” and render a more extended hearing inevitable 
if the judge be bent on a proper decision, or to bring the 
parties to a dead lock, if he be more intent on shortening 


91 


County Courts Jurisdiction . 

the business in order to arrive at a quick one. And, in 
his inexperience of non-professional statement, the judge 
may be very apt to congratulate himself on having nar¬ 
rowed the plaintiff’s, or the defendant’s, threatened lengthy 
and rambling discourse to the mere pith and point of the 
matter. He might as well think to pick up a trinket 
unsoiled out of the mud, as expect to get the facts of the 
case from unpractised persons without concomitant irrele- 
vancies cleaving to them. 

And this occurs occasionally when his premature satis¬ 
faction is damped by something turning up in the state¬ 
ment of the other side, which necessitates again questioning 
the silenced party. Whereon is elicited what gives the 
case a turn altogether different to the judge’s first view of 
it. And if he lack candour or patience, he may admi¬ 
nister a rebuke to the party for not mentioning what he 
could not have failed to do had he been allowed to tell his 
story his own way. We lately heard of a case in the 
West of England, where the complainant, a country 
bumpkin, was so rebuked by the judge for not having 
sooner mentioned such a fact which made for his case. 
The other answered in perfect innocence, and in the 
dialect of his country, (to which our informant did justice, 
but we could not,) to this effect: “ Why, your honour 
would not let me tell my tale my own way, but would 
make me tell it in yours that I am not used to ; so I did 
not know what I was to tell and what not! ” 

Injustice too may be done oftener than is complained of. 
For the acquiescence of the party against whom the deci¬ 
sion is given, is not conclusive of its being a correct one; 
for the Englishman is not prone to whining. The case 
given against him, he may growl an oath or two within 
himself, hut soon sets about repairing what he thinks a bad 
business, and betakes him to his ordinary affairs, without 
perhaps thinking that his case has been decided erro- 


92 


On the Extension of the 

neously, that the law was on his side, only that, from his 
pressing points in his ignorance that did not legally make 
for him, those that were in his favour were passed over 
with little or no attention. A defect which the bustle of 
the court, and the necessity of hastening on to the next 
case, had not left the judge in sufficiently undisturbed 
attention to observe and remedy. 

And yet how is the judge to help this ? He has to 
administer speedy justice, and he is thrown in this 
dilemma, that, if he do not cut matters short, his jus¬ 
tice will lack speed, and, if he do, his speed will lack 
justice. 

The fault lies not in him, hut the system which demands 
what is impracticable. Justice requires investigation, and 
investigation requires time to perform it in, and expence 
to remunerate those who conduct it. Such courts as are 
formed without due consideration to either necessity, must 
prove a failure in this respect, however able the judge who 
presides. By their imperfect machinery, not fitted for 
more than a moderate amount of business, and that of a 
simple character, you diminish their efficiency as you 
extend their jurisdiction. If that jurisdiction be raised 
from twenty pounds to fifty, the increase of business will 
result in their remaining inadequate to the disposal of 
intricate causes from lack of machinery, and becoming 
incapable of dealing with simple ones properly from lack 
of leisure. Without an appeal miserable injustice will be 
the consequence. And if you give one, on what will you 
appeal ? Not being a court of record, and no pleadings 
in writing, everything viva voce, who is to ensure a faithful 
transcript of the matter heard, the evidence adduced in 
support of it, the points raised, in order that the case, as 
originally heard, shall be faithfully transmitted to the 
superior court ? In which it is essential to justice that 
neither party be allowed to adduce fresh matter. What 


93 


County Courts’ Jurisdiction. 

scope for prevarication, assertion, and counter-assertion! 
Is a special case for tlie appeal to be drawn up ? then 
who is to settle it? Is it to he by agreement of the parties ? 
and what, if they cannot agree ? Is it to be settled by 
the judge, whose decision is appealed against? For there 
being no record, it appears to us that, what with disputed 
fact, and disputed law, and disputed issues as to the one or 
the other being raised, the mere settling of the case would 
prove a sort of distinct trial of itself interposed between 
the original hearing and the appeal. And one thing is 
evident, that time and expense will be involved in the 
business, w T ith a minimum of satisfaction, that will be 
material drawbacks on the score of justice, cheapness, and 
speed. And if a trial de novo, in which the parties are to 
proceed without reference to what passed in the inferior 
court, is to take place, it had been every way preferable to 
let the parties go there at once ; where perhaps the thing 
had been, like nine cases out of ten, settled at the writ, as 
the certainty of the result, and the nature of the proce¬ 
dure gave no scope for speculating at a trifling cost for 
the chance of catching a verdict, through the vague, and 
hurried, and irregular course of things in the inferior 
court: for many cases, very simple at Westminster Hall, 
as there presented, sifted by the pleadings, had been com¬ 
plex and perplexing, if presented in the rough by the 
parties themselves, or their attorneys viva voce before a 
judge in the county court, who would be obliged to per¬ 
form in a sitting what had, in the other case, been done 
by the litigants at full leisure, and with mature delibera¬ 
tion, in the course of months: the case, with its evidence 
and points, and conflicting statements in the mass, conti¬ 
nually shifting under him like a quicksand. 

Many other topics we had willingly urged, but they 
would swell our paper to a pamphlet; and our limits 
oblige us, somewhat abruptly, to conclude with the fer- 


94 


A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 

vent wish that no measure so disastrous to our judicial 
system, and the ultimate welfare of the community, as 
the extension of the county courts’ jurisdiction, may ever 
receive the sanction of the legislature. 

T. E. Court. 


VIII. 

A STEAMBOAT PARLEY ABOUT CHESS. 


[Reprinted from “ Tomlinson’s Chess-Player’s Annual for 1856.”] 



gSSlLE getting the better of me, I resolved on an 
appeal to the sea. Hamburgh was my first 
^ thought, but the weather, being unusually fine, 
^ drew me northward, where that commodity is 
of the scarcest, and where things look not so pleasantly 
under other conditions. 

One Wednesday evening in June accordingly found me on 
the Scotch steamer leaving St. Catherine’s Wharf for Edin¬ 
burgh. The night was used up in dropping down the 
river, and in sleeping, which, where one has the knack of 
it, may be as well done in a berth as a bed—two things, 


however, by no means synonymous, as those who have not 
the knack will do well to remember. The morning found 
us coasting it, I know not precisely where; for to my 
shame be it confessed, my interest in that sort of thing is 
not very lively. The general coup cVceil is enough for me, 
and I usually find sufficient within eyeshot to occupy and 
please me, without those frantic appeals to the telescope that 
are so common, and the philosophy of which may perhaps be 
explained on the supposition, that things grow in value as 
they grow invisible ; else whence that eagerness to de¬ 
cipher St. Paul’s from some impossible distance, when you 
will hardly look at it from Ludgate Hill ? 





95 


A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 

And within eyeshot there was much which it were need¬ 
less to inflict on the reader, to whom the sunshine, and the 
blue sky, and the sailing clouds, and the dancing waves, 
and the strong-winged birds that ply about them, though 
pleasant to see, might he flat in the telling. Suffice it that 
the weather was bright, and the water smooth, and the 
vessel steady, and everybody free from that, which is so 
sad to feel and painful to witness; where the unseasoned 
voyager is at buffets with himself, and out of sorts with 
everything—a quarrel which Poseidon alone can settle, 
reducing the sufferer to a state in which, with Hamlet, 
“ Man delights not him, nor woman neither,” so u weary, 
stale, flat, and unprofitable,” for the time at least, “ the 
uses of the world ” appear. 

The passengers were grouped about the deck, chatting 
together, or lolling over the bulwarks watching the water, 
as it swept past them, or looking forwards to see what was 
ahead, or sternwards eyeing the vessel’s wake, which, broad 
and unbroken, stretched to the horizon, marking our 
prosperous course. 

In this state of things I heard a gentleman challenge 
another to chess ; a favourite game with me, whether as a 
player or looker-on, and I accordingly drew near to witness 
the approaching battle. The challenger went below to 
obtain the materials ; hut presently returned with the in¬ 
telligence, that there was a board, but no men. The duello 
was therefore impossible, but the incident occasioned a 
conversation upon the subject of chess, and with some 
diversity of opinion; so that a good-humoured quasi- 
contest arose, in which several took part, instead of two 
only. For there was the challenger, a graduate of Dublin 
University, and his intended antagonist, a clergyman, I 
believe, of the Scotch Church, and past the middle age; 
and there was a good-humoured man from the Mid- 
Lothian, who may have been a gentleman-farmer, but was 


96 A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 

certainly courteous, well informed in general matters, and 
thoroughly up in all that pertains to the agricultural; and 
lastly, a disciple of Galen, who had been out of sorts, and 
was trying how far a sea-voyage would assist him in ful¬ 
filling the injunction, “ Physician, heal thyself.” 

The dialogue began with the graduate’s expression of 
regret at missing his expected game. 

“ You are fond then of the amusement, sir?” said the 
Lothian. 

“ Indeeed I am,” answered the graduate; “ and did my 
skill but match my liking, I should make no mean pro¬ 
fessor of the noble science.” 

“ Science !” exclaimed the Lothian with surprise; “ but, 
however, I see your fondness for chess in the exaggeration, 
or you would not call it a science.” 

“ And why not? You would not style it an art?” 

“ No, surely ; for that belongs rather to the savoir-faire 
of him whose lathe produced the men, than to his who 
handles them.” 

“ Then, once more, why not a science?” 

“ Because it is of no use. Skill, that can be turned to 
no account, can scarcely rank as a science,” said the 
Lothian. 

“ But are you sure,” rejoined the graduate, “ that it is 
of the essence of a science that it should be useful ? ” 

“ Well, T will be sure of nothing in these times, when 
the main business seems to be correcting the blunders 
of the past; being myself moreover among the incor- 
rigibles.” 

“You may he right there,” replied the graduate, 
laughing ; “ but these times favour your present argument 
more than those times; for, among the ancients, it was no 
solitary opinion that deemed utility degrading to science. 
The essence of philosophy with them was, that it should 
he for its own sake that men love knowledge, and not for 


97 


A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 

the uses it might be applied to; and which were, in 
general, regarded as derogatory to the dignity of wisdom- 
loving. Was it not so, sir?” continued the graduate, 
appealing to the clergyman. 

“ It was,” said the latter ; “ and a grave error to boot, 
and little suited to the forked animal, that has to he clothed 
and fed. The error operated painfully enough, and was, 
perhaps, one element of the little progress made in the 
applied sciences in those days, as compared with modern 
times, when the spinning-jenny is found to he no un¬ 
worthy daughter of the pure mathematics.” 

“ Exactly so,” resumed the graduate. “ But in our 
respect for the utility of science, we need not confuse 
speech, and grow inaccurate in our anxiety to be laudatory. 
Utility is clearly not of the essence of science, however just 
a criterion of its value.” 

“ By that criterion, then, let it he judged,” said the 
Lothian. “ Admitting chess to be a science, I reject it as 
useless.” 

“ If, by useless, you mean that the effects of the study 
are limited to the bare pleasure of the student, without 
any immediate benefit to others, you state no more than 
■what is applicable to other sciences, in their relation to 
many who study them. For, after all, what is science in 
the hands of the bulk of those who pursue it, but not pro¬ 
fessionally ? I have friends who botanize, and have done 
so for years past; but am not aware of their adding a 
single discovery to the science, though daily advancing in 
acquaintance with what is already known. Others put in 
for entomology, and are strong in butterflies, and moths, 
and grubs, and have transferred a world of knowledge from 
books, where any one may get at it, to their brains, where 
the enjoyment will die with them. Beetles are the 
enthusiasm of some, and shells are the rage with others, 
who are daily adding to their collections, employing their 

H 


98 A Steamboat Parley about Chess . 

time very gracefully and fitly; although mankind may not 
benefit by their labours, nor the realms of beetlcdom and 
cockledom be appreciably enlarged. Utility in their case 
can scarcely be claimed for what is at best but a scientific 
amusement.” 

“ You forget the improvement of the individual himself,” 
said the doctor. 

“ Pardon me, I have taken that into account.” 

“ And yet have no higher term for it than amuse¬ 
ment?” 

“ What higher is wanted? For amusement need not 
be unimproving; nor is it so antagonistic to serious occu¬ 
pation but that a good deal that men do is the one or the 
other, according to the object in view. Blowing soap- 
bubbles, and watching their shifting colours, had been, 
time out of mind, the amusement of children; and yet it 
rose to serious occupation when a Newton was investigat¬ 
ing the laws of light. And on the other hand, the 
mariner’s is a serious occupation, while yachting is not so, 
whatever the seamanship displayed.” 

“ Very true,” said the doctor; u and as you place 
amusement on a broader footing than usual, I should like 
to hear you state its relative position to serious occupation 
more precisely.” 

“ Persiflage —eh, doctor?” returned the graduate, with 
a laugh. “ Under what head would you have me rank 
your proposal ? Is it seriously put, or for the amusement 
of trotting me out at some length, and voting me a bore 
when done ? In the latter case you would deserve to be 
taken at your word, but, for the sake of this good com¬ 
pany, I must decline involving them in the infliction. It 
is enough that our friend here, whose exception to my use 
of the term originated the discussion, has admitted chess to 
be a science.” 

“ Nay,” said the doctor; “ you are not to escape us, by 


99 


A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 

the real persiflage of turning to a joke what was seriously 
meant.” 

“ I think you are committed to the doctor’s proposal,” 
observed the pastor; “ at least, we cannot allow your 
refusal the colour of sparing us an infliction.” 

“ And as to my admission of chess being a science,” 
said the Lothian, “ I hereby revoke the same, if there be 
no other way of hearing you make the best of a very bad 
case.” 

“ Well, gentlemen,” said the graduate, “ if you will 
have it so, I must proceed ; and on your own heads be the 
tediousness of my plea for amusement. To begin at the 
beginning, therefore, let us roughly classify men’s occu¬ 
pations in their waking moments, and we shall find them 
conveniently divide into what men must do, what they 
ought to do, and what they may do; or, in other words, 
into business, duty, and recreation. 

“ The importance of recreation I shall not insist on, for 
the thing is a necessity, as indispensable to our well-being 
as the serious occupation with which it should alternate. 
Speech itself has expressed men’s sense of the matter, by 
the very metaphors employed in its designation. The ‘ bent 
bow ’ is no ill type of the state of tension and strain of our 
faculties; and to this a tacit allusion is made in the term 
for its opposite, relaxation. And again, wearied in body 
and mind, by the overtasking of either, who has not felt 
himself refreshed and made a new man of—created over 
again, as it were—by some suitable amusement? which 
may therefore well be called recreation. Or, in the same 
condition, who has not felt the force of what shall unweary 
him, as the French phrase it, and be indeed a delasse- 
ment ? 

“ Recreation is then the correlative and complement of 
serious occupation, to enable us to resume which more 
effectually is a part of its legitimate function of bettering 


L.of C. 


100 A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 

us bodily and mentally. And in kind, it should vary with 
the serious occupation with which it alternates, and be 
determined by that; giving rest to what the latter has 
overtasked, and, on the other hand, exercising what it may 
have left unemployed. In recreation, therefore, we should 
do well to exercise the mind or the body according as our 
serious occupation has failed to do so. A canter on horse¬ 
back, for example, were fitting recreation for the barrister, 
immersed all day in his vocation in court, or at chambers; 
but not so fit for a cavalry soldier, or a performer at 
Astley’s. And he, on the other hand, whose daily 
employment affords but little exercise for his mental 
faculties, would do well, in his recreation, to fix on some¬ 
thing that will.” 

“ We have you there, methinks,” interposed the Lo¬ 
thian. “ You have stated an alternative which excludes 
your chess. To exercise the body, w T e have walking, 
riding, running, rowing, cricket, quoits, &c.; and for the 
mind, who would think of chess, science though it be, 
when there are astronomy, botany, and all the ‘ ologies ’ 
to choose from ?” 

“ Ay, and all the ‘ ics / ” rejoined the graduate ; “ for 
when you name chronology, conchology, entomology, geo¬ 
logy, &c. though you may leave out astrology, as too 
playful, do not forget mathematics, optics, hydrostatics, 
nor yet hydraulics, dynamics, acoustics, and the rest of 
the tribe of ( ics all of them doubtless highly recrea¬ 
tive, and certainly affording a large enough field.” 

“ I fear,” said the Lothian, “ that you have but little 
respect for the ‘ ics ’ and the ‘ ologies.'’ ” 

“ I respect them greatly; but I do not think that, in 
their intellectual bearing, they will interfere w r ith my 
favourite game; for of those grave damsels, the Sciences, 
some are too august to be approached by any but who 
have ‘ serious intentions; ’ and of the rest, if there be one 


101 


A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 

or so more affable, we must not mistake the smiles she 
scatters among casual admirers, for the loving aspect slie 
reserves for him who woos her in earnest.” 

“ Your respect for Science, I perceive, sir,” said the 
doctor, “ does not extend to those casual admirers.” 

“ I have no cause of quarrel with -them, and for the 
best of all reasons, that I am one of the class; and yet, 
methinks, there is no harm in our relation to the common 
object of our ‘ attentions ’ being more precisely ascer¬ 
tained. For the truth is, we are too prone to ascribe the 
whole dignity of any art or science to every exercise of it, 
at the manifest risk of thinking more of ourselves and 
our employment than the case calls for. I confess to a 
casual admirer’s penchant for the Lady Astronomy, as 
well as for her graceful sister, the green-robed nymph 
that taught the Hebrew king to speak ‘ of trees, from the 
cedar that is in Lebanon, to the hyssop that springeth 
out of the wall; ’ and, for the footing I am on, have no 
cause to complain of the favour shown me, although far 
short of what might warrant the delirium of fancying 
myself a Newton or a Kepler, a Linnaeus or a Jussieu. 
Many a night have I spent in pointing the telescope at 
the same stars, and found it a pleasure, and, barring risk 
of rheumatism, perhaps not unhealthful; but with no 
whit more exercise of intellect than in the thousands who, 
with naked eye, and without mapping out the heaven’s fair 
face, nightly gaze on its exceeding beauty with ever fresh 
delight. 

“ And after botanizing, in my fashion, all a summer’s 
day, from breezy morning through sultry noon, until the 
lengthening shades of evening suggest return, how shall 
I difference my occupation, intellectually, from his who 
wanders through field and lane, by runlet, brook, or river’s 
marge, and loves to view their populace of quivering 
grasses and bright-eyed flowers, and watch their whisper- 


102 A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 

ings with the wanton breeze, although he know them not 
by name ? He has been admiring all the flowers, and I 
have been indexing a few ; but candour forbids much claim 
to the intellectual in either. Delight has been our guerdon, 
with more of intensity, perhaps, on my side, from the 
scienter thrown into it. But, after all, it is but pleasure 
in either case; exquisite, indeed, but with the same dash 
of saunter in both. 

“ The truth is, that in general the sciences, where 
taken to as a clelassement, do, intellectually considered, 
but improve the faculties of memory and attention; those 
which less admit of partial handling, and draw more on 
the intellect, as the mathematical studies, being rarely 
resorted to in the way of amusement. So that science 
has not closed the field against a recreation that shall at 
once amuse the mind and sharpen its faculties. And this 
description, I make bold to say, is pre-eminently answered 
by chess. That it is amusing, its fascinating influence on 
those who have even but a moderate acquaintance with it, 
sufficiently shows. And its tendency to sharpen the intel¬ 
lect is equally patent; for memory, and the power of 
fixing the attention on the matter before it—by no means 
the commonest of faculties—will here find scope. And 
so will fertility of invention in devising deep-laid schemes, 
and sagacity in penetrating those of your adversary; 
patience, too, in persisting in a design as long as it is 
feasible, and decision in breaking off when it ceases to 
be so, and falling into fresh combinations before your 
opponent can be sure that you have abandoned your first 
design. Caution tempered with boldness, and boldness 
with caution, eager, yet self-possessed, that mars no op¬ 
portunity by precipitance, nor lets it slip hy dilatory 
dawdling, may here find ample field of exercise. All the 
strategic qualities, in short, which are called forth in actual 
warfare, may here find parallel in this mimic battle of 


A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 103 

ours; only here, if the general get into a scrape, he must 
not look to his soldiers to ‘ pull him through.’ ” 

“ I must say,” said the Lothian, “ that you stand up 
stoutly for the intellectual character of your favourite 
game ; hut how do you account for a dolt making a good 
chess-player ? ” 

“ I would desire the fact to he ascertained before at¬ 
tempting to explain it.” 

“ Then you question it ? ” 

“ Undoubtedly.” 

“ But you have heard the remark ?” 

“ Often; and set it down as one of the sayings that 
serve to ventilate the lungs, or point a period—conversa¬ 
tion birds of paradise, truly; all wing and no feet, that 
never settle on the terra jirma of proof.” 

“ But how do you account for its currency?” 

“ Easily. First, there is the paradox, which has 
always a pungency charming to many; and paradox 
it is, that a stupid person should excel in what demands 
skill. And then, for the rest, they yield a lazy assent to 
what is indifferent to them. For who cares to confute 
what concerns them not? The dullards, indeed, we 
need not reckon, who, feeling they are liable to be drawn 
for the Dolt-Militia, would fain find a substitute in the 
man that checkmates them. Naturally enough ; for the 
infallible mark of noodledom, in all ages, has been dis¬ 
paragement of what it cannot attain to. And, finally, 
there is nothing so hard as to judge of character, and 
gauge the intellect of many that we meet with, although 
we all attempt it at times, and many of us fancy with suc¬ 
cess, from our judgments so seldom admitting of verifica¬ 
tion. Believe me, in many a judgment of doltdom, if it 
came to revision, the critic would have to change places 
with the man he condemns. 

“ And as to the matter in hand, I am convinced that, 


104 A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 

in every individual case of connecting want of sense with 
skill at chess, it would he found, on examination, that we 
had been mistaken in our estimate either of the person or 
of his proficiency in the game. 

“ There is, however, this of truth at the bottom of 
the prejudice, and may have given rise to it, viz. that 
you cannot pronounce on the relative intellect of the 
players from the result of a contest. To play the game 
well is positively a proof of intellect in the winner, but 
not of intellect superior to his opponent’s. There are 
so many causes, extraneous to the game, that may render 
judgment on the point impossible: the loser’s inexpe¬ 
rience, for example ; disturbed attention at the time, or 
preoccupation, and returning recollection of some of the 
cares of the day; for escape from which he may have 
fled to the game, but which prove too strong for him, and 
pursue and reclaim the fugitive. Or he may be a lite¬ 
rary man, and a passing observation have awakened a 
train of thought of more interest than the game, to which, 
therefore, he continues to pay but divided attention. Such 
considerations suffice to show that with the highest intel¬ 
lect there may be failure at chess ; but not that the game 
can be played to perfection without it. For what if the 
victor, instead of the vanquished, be subject to all the 
disturbing causes we have hinted at, but by a strong effort 
of will keeps them at bay, and concentrates his attention 
on the matter before him, and that against an equal anta¬ 
gonist, is there no intellect exerted here ? Or is it, in¬ 
deed, so trivial a game that finds a field for its exercise?” 

“ Upon my word,” said the Lothian, “ your zealous 
advocacy makes me almost ashamed of confessing igno¬ 
rance of the game, and puts me to looking about for an 
excuse for disliking it. What shall it be ? Shall I say 
that I hate chess because one cannot talk at it, and so 
conversation is spoilt ? ” 


105 


A Steamboat Parley about Chess . 

“No, sir,” answered the graduate ; “ because in your 
case it would be simply untrue: for I perceive that, though 
well able to hold your own in conversation, you are not one 
to stir a talk for talking’s sake. The real pinch of the 
objection you hint at is oftener felt in the game abstracting 
a brace of listeners than talkers. Were the players-to 
leave off and insist on talking instead of listening, your 
conversation-man would quickly be for reconsigning them 
to chess.” 

“ Nay, if you compliment me out of my opposition,” 
said the Lothian, “ I must seek for succour from these 
gentlemen.” 

“ Do not reckon on me,” said the doctor; my senti¬ 
ments are pretty much those we have just heard.” 

“ But you, Mr. Cour,” resumed the Lothian, turning 
to me, “ have been silent hitherto. May I hope that you 
will make a diversion in my favour?” 

“ On the contrary; I must say, ‘ ditto, to Mr. Burke 
and have nothing to add, except my conviction that, when 
next we meet, we shall have to congratulate you on having 
become a zealous chess-player in the interval.” 

“ The current is against me, indeed,” resumed the 
Lothian, addressing the clergyman. “ In my extremity 
I fly to the Church. To you I appeal against the heresy.” 

“ Not to me, for I must endorse it as orthodox, as what 
I should have to say would be on the same side.” 

“ Then, by all means, let us have it,” rejoined the 
Lothian. “ As you will not speak against it, I am curious 
to know more in its favour. If I am to be a convert, the 
more cumulative the reasons for turning the better; they 
cannot be piled too high.” 

“ I have little to add,” said the pastor; “ except that, 
having the charge of youth, the educational bearing of the 
game has chiefly struck me. My experience has led me 
to think very highly of chess as a means of developing 


106 A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 

character in the young, and therefore revealing to the 
instructor what it is so vital for him to know, but which 
he often finds it so hard to get at; for the hearts of the 
young are apt to close against the attempts of the teacher 
to read them in the hour of instruction; and if they open 
at all it is in the hour of recreation. And at this game 
especially do the qualities of head and heart reveal them¬ 
selves quite unconsciously on the part of the players. It 
affords accordingly an easy opportunity for timely correc¬ 
tion of deficiency or excess. With youth there is no 
disguise but will be thrown off in so earnest an occupation 
as they usually find this to be. The impetuous and the 
cautious, the timid and the overweening, the deliberate 
and the unthinking, show themselves here. And here the 
generous nature, that will take no advantage, contrasts 
with the illiberal, that accepts every indulgence, but yields 
nothing in turn. And the emulous but noble spirit that, 
eager for victory, yet scorns to extenuate defeat, is favour¬ 
ably distinguished from the meaner one, that ascribes 
discomfiture to anything and everything but the skill of 
his opponent. In a word, these embryo men of ours 
contrive on a chess-board’s narrow field to play by antici¬ 
pation the game of life in miniature, and with the self¬ 
same qualities that will one day mark the larger game. 

“ So satisfied, indeed, do I feel of its beneficial influ¬ 
ence, that I would have chess taught in every school 
throughout the land, so that every one might be able to 
play it. And, least of all, would I except the schools of 
the poor; for this result would follow, that the poor man 
of another generation would have the advantage of a 
familiar pastime, which he might enjoy at home with a 
neighbour by his own fireside, instead of resorting to nine¬ 
pins, which require the alehouse and a skittle-ground. 
And, lastly, the gambling spirit which is making such 
havoc with the morals of our poor, as the betting-houses 


A Steamboat Parley about Chess. 107 

too painfully prove, would meet an appropriate check in 
the general cultivation of a game from which all chance 
is excluded. Hazard and chess are antagonistic: for 
to the chess mind nothing can be more alien than the 
gamester’s spirit; while to the latter, whose very breath is 
the excitement of ever-fluctuating chance, the protracted 
deliberation of our game would be simply a torture. 

“ I could wish, therefore, that every hamlet and village 
in the country were as skilled in the game as the good 
people of Strobeck in Germany, of which so interesting an 
account is given in that charming little volume, Mr. Tom¬ 
linson’s ‘ Amusements in Chess ’—the very book, by the 
way, for our friend here from the Mid-Lothian, to complete 
his conversion. One of the best players of my acquaintance 
commenced his knowledge of the game with this hook, 
and the superiority of his play to mine he is pleased to 
attribute entirely to his having had a good beginning in 
the grounding it gave him. I procured the book on the 
strength of his recommendation, and found it deserving 
the high eulogium passed upon it, and have accordingly 
made it, along with Staunton’s ‘ Handbook ’ for the more 
advanced students, one of the chess prizes for my hoys, 
and a rare favourite it is among them.” 

“ Well,” said the Lothian, “ I shall certainly procure 
the work as soon as we land. In the meantime, can you 
give me an idea of its contents ? ” 

“ The volume has three divisions. The first is devoted 
to the history, antiquities, and curiosities of the game—a 
comprehensive and agreeable summary which will particu¬ 
larly repay perusal. The second portion opens a very 
graceful and easy access to the game itself; and the last 
comprises a choice selection of problems, on which you 
may sharpen your chess faculty very profitably so long as 
you can abstain from looking at the solutions, to which, 
however, when you are finally driven in despair, you may 


108 


War not Unchristian. 


console yourself with the reflection that many an able 
player before you has been in the same predicament, for 
the problems are really of the first quality.” 

Here the bell rang for dinner; and so ended a dia¬ 
logue, to which I contributed no more than what you see. 

T. E. Cour. 


IX. 

WAR NOT UNCHRISTIAN. 

A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR OF A DIALOGUE ENTITLED 
“WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?” 

Kentish Town, May 14, 1860. 

Dear-, 

CCEPT my thanks for your interesting “ Dia¬ 
logue ” on Christianity. The subject, author, 
and handling, demand considerate answer; 
but adequate discussion of the topics in your 
pamphlet would quickly run to a pamphlet in return, and 
I content me, therefore, with stating, briefly as I can, 
my opinion on some of the points on which you request it. 

The development theory, glanced at in p. 4, I have 
ever rejected as irreconcileable with the scope of the 
Christian scheme, and especially with its prime claim of 
being the gospel of the poor. The world may grow 
richer, wiser in all worldly knowledge, and inimitably 
increase in its command over the powers of nature, but it 
will not better the Christianity of the Apostles after Pente¬ 
cost. I say Pentecost, taking that as the period of their 
full enlightenment, and the subsequently written Scrip¬ 
ture, viz. the whole of the New Testament, as the result 
of that enlightenment. In that Scripture lies the Chris- 




War not Unchristian. 


109 


tian’s code, but in the whole of it, not in one part only, 
though it he that sweet and prominent portion, the Ser¬ 
mon on the Mount. 

Taken, then, as a code, what is its aim ? Is it social 
or individual ? I believe individual. It aims at making 
every individual in the whole world a Christian, hut as to 
the social combinations of those individuals into na¬ 
tions, governments, and the like, it has nothing to say. 
It claims to sway the heart and will of the individual in 
whatever sphere of action, but as to that sphere is silent, 
because no condition but yields ample scope for Christian 
obedience, which is claimed only within the range of volun¬ 
tary action. Hence it hath, roundly speaking, no word on 
social arrangements, or forms of society, not even of the 
Christian community in itself, and so is all but silent on what 
hath vexed so many earnest and good men, Church Go¬ 
vernment ; on which disputes are, perhaps, the more lively 
for the disputants not pausing sufficiently to consider what 
is meant by a church, and what ground there may be for 
their particular notion of it in the Scripture itself. 

Hence, also, it deigns no word of rebuke of that most 
accursed of all the arbitrary conventional postures into 
which the passions of the sons of Adam have cast them, 
viz. slavery; which it hath yet so largely diminished, and 
is ultimately destined to destroy, not by kindling impa¬ 
tience in the slave, but by troubling the conscience of his 
master in keeping him. 

It declines to prescribe for social aggregate action, and 
wisely ; for social aggregate action covers but a small part 
of the entire life of the individual, and is, moreover, 
beside the main aim of religion, which regards the motive 
even more than the act; while it is manifest that much 
excellent aggregate social action might proceed on mixed 
motives, not one of which would Christianly clear the indi¬ 
vidual. 


110 


War not Unchristian. 


For politics, as for science, we sliall look in vain to 
Scripture. Is any course then politically open to the 
Christian ? By no means ; for Christ claims the Christian 
throughout his life, public and private. In considering, 
however, what course conscience dictates, let him not mis¬ 
take precepts that touch him solely in his individual capa¬ 
city, as fettering the conscientious enlightened discharge 
of duty in his social capacity. The key-note of Christian 
ethics is self-subjugation and self-sacrifice, and it would 
be hard to put any limit to the degree it might acceptably 
reach, so long as it is confined to self, but not a step 
beyond. 

Our Saviour’s loving imitation to the rich young man to 
sell all and give to the poor, involved a sacrifice confined to 
the youth himself, for he had no children, or he would 
have pleaded that: but “ he went away sorrowful because 
he had great possessions.” The voluntary sacrifice of 
time, wealth, energy, which religion demands, is limited 
to that which we hold not in trust. And clearly some¬ 
thing of each is due to the society in which we live, and 
which protects us in the enjoyment of what we have and 
are ; how much is due, let the laws of each state, and the 
zeal of the patriot determine. Religion will never seek 
to divert it. 

But taking the New Testament as the code for indi¬ 
vidual guidance, how interpret it ? I answer so as every 
part shall harmonize with the whole, and the breadth and 
scope of a passage, that points in one direction, be modified 
by that which points in another. Human speech is an 
imperfect medium, and, even in conveying a divine message, 
some of its imperfection may be expected to cleave to it, for 
it lies in the hearer. Even in divine message, therefore, 
time, place, and occasion must be considered in interpret¬ 
ing its scope. From such consideration no absolute rule 
of literal interpretation, on the one hand, or of figurative 


War not Unchristian . 


Ill 


on the other, will relieve us. In the very Decalogue itself, 
plainly as it speaks, such consideration was called for. 
“ Thou slialt not commit adultery,” “ Thou shalt not 
steal,” were indeed to be taken in the absolute and full 
sense of the words : but “ Thou shalt not kill ” required a 
limit, viz. this, that like the entire Decalogue, it was 
addressed to the individual and not to the nation : for taken 
absolutely in the literal force of the phrase it would else 
have militated with the employment of human agency in 
inflicting death, the very penalty annexed to breach of the 
Decalogue, and so amply provided for in other parts of the 
Mosaic Code. 

Such considerations are applicable to every part of the 
Old and of the New Testament. And in dealing with that 
exquisite portion of the latter, commonly known as the 
Sermon on the Mount, remember we have neither the 
ipsissimci verba of our Lord, for he spoke in the dialect of 
the country, Hebrew or Syriac, and not in Greek; nor 
have we the whole of what he then spoke, nor in its sequence. 
We have rather, I should say, disjointed heads of what the 
Evangelists retained of his discourse, or actual topics or 
texts, on which the Saviour expatiated at large, and which 
were to be retained by his hearers along with the expla¬ 
nations and discourse they grounded. 

To me, it seems that the discourse, while containing so 
much that is sweetly applicable to all, at all times, was yet 
mainly addressed to his disciples (though, “ in the audience 
of the people ”), and some of it with particular reference 
to their condition of being charged with divine message, 
hut so unpalatable to the rich and the powerful. Luke’s 
account of the matter (chap, vi.) tends to confirm me in this 
view. 

And so considered, the injunctions to his disciples to 
check the very feeling of resentment at the violence and 
contumely they would infallibly encounter, have a sublime, 


112 


War not Unchristian. 


and, at the same time, eminently practical character. For 
as, on the one hand, resentment at the ill reception of their 
message and ill-treatment of themselves would have been 
vain, and, without special miracle, have put abrupt end to 
their mission; on the other hand, a patient and voluntary 
exposure to every personal ill, even to the death, in order 
to deliver the message out of pure love, and for the good 
of those that were inflicting the evil, could not ultimately 
fail to command respect, and insure a hearing. 

It was indeed a sublime counsel, and as practical as 
sublime; but the most emphatic expression of it was not 
more than the disciples needed—earnest men, of quick 
feeling, whose very zeal had more than once to be checked 
by our Lord, as when they would have called down fire 
from Heaven to consume the Samaritan villagers, and 
when Peter drew upon the high-priest’s servant. The in¬ 
junction not to resist persecution in whatever form was an 
admirable missionary precept, and addressed, it seems to 
me, to the Apostles in their missionary capacity; and as 
our Lord did not vouchsafe miraculous forcing of conviction, 
it pointed to the only possible successful means of carrying 
out their mission. It was entirely suited to their position 
of few among many ; and, indeed, the whole force of such 
conduct lay in their being few among many, and so in¬ 
spiring respect with the many by its very boldness. But 
similar submissive behaviour from a multitude, or a nation, 
towards a handful of persecutors would hardly impress the 
latter so favourably. What was heroism in the first case 
would be construed pusillanimity in the last, and encourage 
a continuance of contemptuous ill-treatment. 

In fine, the directions as to extreme forbearance addressed 
to the disciples, who had to go forth and evangelise the 
nations, were rather like the sending ambassadors, or a flag 
of truce, viz., specially applicable to them, and not to the 
nation or host at large. And as to the Apostles, it should 


War not Unchristian. 


113 


be remembered that no other than that unresisting de¬ 
meanour throughout was possible. They could not with any 
chance of success in their mission, have followed any other 
course than the one so earnestly prescribed them. To pursue 
the figure, they were sent forth as a flag of truce, weapon¬ 
less, for weapons they could not have used. But we, the 
host at large, are not therefore deprived of the weapons 
that just sense of right may render lawfully useful. We 
have an option of other conduct, they had none. They 
had no choice, their very position precluding it. We have 
a choice, and the only question is how shall we exercise it ? 
Shall it be yielding to every encroachment, or, scrupulously 
respecting others’ rights, temperately but firmly main¬ 
tain our own ? 

Generosity and rapacity, absolute abandonment of one’s 
own right and the invasion of others’, are extremes. But 
medio tutissimus —safety lies between extremes, and justice 
furnishes that safety. Concession never cured encroach¬ 
ment, but a sense of justice dispenses with both by 
quenching desire for either. For, contrarily to what Alpha 
insinuates at p. 7 of your pamphlet, it is not the resistance 
to aggression that causes the evils he speaks of, but the 
desire to aggress. Determination to keep to what is your 
own never yet bred evil in the world, but the not keeping 
to your own, and infringing on that which is another’s. 
Resisting unrighteous interference with right, where re¬ 
sistance is feasible, is moreover a grand ingredient in 
abating wrong. Action is rarely determined irresistibly, 
but usually on a balance of motives, and the balance against 
aggression grows with every effectual resistance, that rests, 
mind you, within the bounds of its own right, and does not 
pass on, encouraged by success, into retaliatory aggression, 
on the rights of the aggressor. Bentley’s version of the 
Greek philosopher’s saying is to the point: “ What would 
rid the world of injuries ?” was asked of Solon. “ If the 

i 


114 


War not Unchristian. 


bystanders would have the same resentment with those 
that suffer the wrong.” 

It is asked at p. 9 of the “ Dialogue,” “ Why are 
there Bill Sykeses in the world ? ” Broadly, because 
it is not made more worth their while not to be so. Many 
causes may favour, many might check the growth -of such ; 
but among the latter would not, surely, be the feeling 
that rapacity and violence could be indulged in with 
impunity. 

Alpha’s answer at p. 11 reveals the inherent weakness 
of the concession-theory: for “ locking up ” the recalci¬ 
trant would hardly square with the literal yielding to every 
request, elsewhere insisted on. And, again, how would 
you lock up, say 500 determined armed ruffians who had 
taken a fancy to control you and yours ? If they refused 
to be locked up, and use their weapons in plundering the 
country, buffeting the men, and violating their wives and 
daughters, how do you stop that without having recourse 
to arms and resisting to the death ? And on the other 
hand, suppose you yield, would submission convert the 500 ? 

All security, in fact, depends upon ultimate appeal to 
force; and the laws which yield security from individual 
violence, rest upon it. Between yielding our rights to 
aggression, and the moderate but firm defence of them, 
even by force if necessary, but respecting the rights of others, 
the agreement is this—that if either rule were universally 
adopted, if such adoption in the first case be not a contra¬ 
diction, injustice would disappear. But there is impedi¬ 
ment to either being adopted universally, and at once—and 
the difference between them is, that in the meantime, the 
class adopting the latter rule can grow gradually, and exist 
in the face of the rapacity which it repels ; while the other 
would never admit of a nucleus forming itself, but be de¬ 
voured up by ruffian rapacity long before it had succeeded 
in converting it. 


War not Unchristian. 


115 


And tlie theory of just defence of your own and other’s 
rights has this advantage over the contrary ; that it best 
provides for that voluntary self-sacrifice which Christianity 
calls for, by maintaining free agency to offer it, and repel¬ 
ling the control of an alien and corrupt will. Free agency 
is the condition of all Christian action, and it is the Chris¬ 
tian’s duty to maintain it. His liberty is God’s gift, as 
precious as life itself, if not more so ; and it is his duty to 
defend it to the death, and this in his own case—but for 
his country, it is a hundred-fold his duty. 

And this leads me to the vexed topic of war. Here I 
must be allowed to express the difficulty I have ever felt 
in making out the ground on which some very good 
Christians stigmatize the soldier’s calling as unchristian. 
In the Scriptures I find no authority for the notion, and 
am pretty clearly of opinion that it was alien to the con¬ 
victions of the early Christians. In the New Testament 
itself, passing over the soldiers before the Baptist, where he 
censured not their calling, but exhorted them to conscien¬ 
tious discharge of it; and passing over the Centurion, 
whose servant Christ healed, and of whom he said he had 
“ not found so great faith, no, not in Israelbut without 
one word of censure on his calling, we come to Cornelius, 
the “ Centurion of the band called the Italian” (Acts x.), 
where we have full account of the man, and his ac¬ 
ceptance with God, and his baptism, and detail of the 
Apostle Peter’s scruples in the matter, but not a word 
suggestive of the man’s profession as a soldier being in 
the way. 

For my part, I believe that the early Christians had no 
suspicion of the soldier’s calling being inconsistent with 
Christianity. Nay, next to the slaves, I suspect, no one 
class contributed more largely than the legionaries to swell 
the Christian ranks. Men so frequently face to face with 
death as soldiers and sailors, where keeping clear of pro- 


116 


War not Unchristian. 


fligacy, have been always found open to serious impressions, 
and the superstitious turn of the Pagan soldiery would 
rather help than hinder their aptitude for better things. 
One thing is clear, that the new faith made progress 
among the simple soldiery. And in Constantine’s enter¬ 
prise of establishing Christianity as the religion of the 
empire, a grand lever was the support of his Christian 
legionaries. 

In truth there is, it appears to me, but little ground for 
saying that war itself is necessarily unchristian. War is 
always indeed a calamity, but, in those that are responsible 
for it, it is a crime or a duty according to its necessity and 
its cause; while, as to the individual soldiers themselves, 
each has his sphere of duty, utterly irrespective of the 
justice or injustice of the war itself. War is an evil, but 
not unmixed, affording scope, like all other conditions in 
this sublunary world, for its appropriate virtues, and 
temptations to its incident vices. Pearful and rough in 
its working, it is not more soul-killing than the besetments 
of peace. The heart that is right will find a clear footing 
through the highest turmoil of a soldier’s life. Plavelock 
was as much with Christ throughout his career as the 
Quaker in the counting-house. 

War is an evil, but not the worst evil. The subjugation 
of a free people by a foreign despot were worse than the 
war by which they avert it. The war waged by Judas 
Maccabeus delivered the Jews from an infinitely worse 
evil. Tell and the Swiss patriots had hardly rid themselves 
of Austrian tyranny, or maintained their own freedom, 
without war. William the Silent had not delivered the 
Netherlands on the principles of William Penn; nor, on 
sheath-sword theory, had the Devonshire worthies grappled 
with the big galleons of the Armada. Even the Thirty 
Years’ War, with its desolation of Germany, left a legacy 
more than worth the sacrifice, in leaving freedom of 


Proverbs and their Teaching . 117 

thought to Protestant Germany. But for Gustavus Adol¬ 
phus and his doings in those days, the Concordat had 
not been confined to Austria in these. 

Such are my sentiments on some of the points on 
which you have requested them. Would they had been 
briefer ; but such is the letting out of water, and of ink. 

Yours most truly, 

W. G. T. B. 


X. 

PROVERBS AND THEIR TEACHING. 

ROVERBIAL wisdom, is, indeed, a sort of 
wisdom, but of a very special, not to say nar¬ 
row, kind. A proverb or maxim, unlike a 
principle, is no guide of life, underlying the 
whole course of it, but rather a sort of ejaculatory caution 
—a “ hilloa, look out ahead” sort of thing—which re¬ 
quires as much wisdom to profit by as would suffice to 
dispense with it. 

Their specialty is seen in the counterpart character of 
most of them, showing them to be rather pointed against 
extremes of divergence in life’s course, to the right or 
left, than actually marking the line itself. “ A bird in the 
hand is worth two in the bush” points against the over¬ 
tendency of some to risk present good for the sake of 
great, but uncertain, advantages. “ Nothing venture, 
nothing have,” on the other hand, points against the 
opposite extreme of those who will leave nothing to uncer¬ 
tainty, and set their faces against risk of any kind—a 
notion which, pushed to its utmost, would stop all enter¬ 
prise, even the healthiest, and bring life to a dead lock. 







118 


Hexameters. 


Not only all greatness would be out of it, but its very 
motion would be gone ; the husbandman would not sow, in 
the uncertainty of a crop. 

These maxims, therefore, are not guides, but cautions, 
and, if to be used in life, it is but as the sculls of the boat¬ 
man, who sometimes pulls with one more than the other, 
as the bias of his boat requires; their conjoined action 
resulting in a forward motion, which is in the direction of 
neither. They are only useful if you have the skill to 
employ them properly. 

How different is the life-guiding faculty of a principle! 
“ Do unto others as you would that others should do unto 
you,” and suum cuique tribuito -—“ render to every one 
his own,” are not mere maxims, but principles of action, 
which are well fit to run straight through life, from the 
cradle to the grave, requiring no antagonism to correct 
their action. “ A bird in the hand is worth two in the 
bush,” would have crippled Nelson’s career, who, at 
Copenhagen and elsewhere, would seem to have been for 
the “ Nothing venture nothing have ” aspect of proverbial 
wisdom. 


XI. 


HEXAMETERS. 

N modern hexameters I fail to perceive the 
impress of poet, or matter, as in the Latin 
and Greek. All English hexameters, as far as 
I have perceived, on score of measure and 
rhythm, might have been written by the same man. In 
German there appears to me a similar impediment to 
individualizing the poet’s music. Schiller, and Goethe, 
and Yoss, draw singularly near in the march of their hexa- 





Hexameters . 


119 


meters, and for the same reason, that all three are in the 
same hobble of having to select words to suit a measure 
alien to the language, instead of those that are wont to 
express their own ideas. The thoughts, remember, of a 
great poet have, for the greater part, long dwelt with him, 
and, consciously to the poet or not, have selected for them¬ 
selves familiar expression long before their actual utter¬ 
ance in formal publishing fashion. They float in the mind 
in rhythmic and significant affinities, ready to break out 
into metrical form, in fragmentary portions of which, by 
natural bias of a poet thinking in his own tongue, they 
have long combined. All this will be broken through by 
casting those thoughts into an alien metre, the exigencies 
of which require associate phrases to separate, and the 
thoughts to utter themselves anew. In this process the 
brooding spirit of the poet will have to retranslate itself, 
with consequent abatement of affluent expression. 

Take hexameters in the tongues, be it Greek or Latin, 
to which they belong, and you feel at once that the measure 
is at home here, and the individuality of the poet comes 
out with strength in the unrestrained use of the vernacular. 
The hexameters of Homer and Hesiod are strikingly dif¬ 
ferent in the very march of the metre; and for subject, I 
think a different rhythmic handling is perceptible between 
the Iliad and Odyssey, both Homeric, both, in my belief, 
from the same master-mind, and differenced but by the 
theme; and both, for instance, differing from the poor 
poet of the Argonauts on the one hand, and that thorough 
poet of pastoral, Theocritus, on the other. 

The Latin, again—that ear must be dull, indeed, or 
little accustomed to weigh the matter, that feels no differ¬ 
ence in the hexameters of the jovial and loose-slippered 
Horace, and the stately, and somewhat frigid, march of 
the Virgilian metre. And Lucretius differs from Virgil in 
this respect, though imitated of the latter, as Dryden by 


120 


Hexameters. 


Pope. There is an affluent ebullience in the hexameters 
of the elder poet, which the most enthusiastic admirers 
would scarcely claim for the iEneid or the Georgies. The 
hexameter, in short, belonged to the language, and so 
took the impress of the poets, differing in each as our 
blank verse differs in Milton, Young, and Cowper. Show 
me the English hexameters that differ like English blank 
verse. 

One fatal difficulty in the way of free hexameters in 
English is the reluctance of our tongue to furnish spon¬ 
dees for the purpose. Its iambic character compels rejec¬ 
tion of expressive words to a most inconvenient extent 
where the measure is used. Polysyllables, with their 
fixed accent, will be found intractable; and the words of 
one syllable, which take any accent, according to emphasis, 
will not much mend the matter; for, except at the fifth 
and sixth foot, the reader cannot beforehand be sure if he 
is to group them into dactyls or spondees, and will, there¬ 
fore, have to scan the verse in order to read it. This were 
much as if you should ask a musician to read off an air, 
of which the notes, indeed, are given, but not with distinc¬ 
tion of crotchet and quaver. 

Blank verse, and the other metres in our language, 
accept all its words, and the verses read themselves. The 
Greek and Roman hexameter accepted all in like manner. 
Hexameter is a channel through which Greek and Latin 
flow freely, and through which English will not flow, 
though, at great sacrifice, it may be partially forced. 

I should expect to find a relation between the quantity 
in separate words of a language, and the rhythmic com¬ 
positions of that language. If, for instance, hexameters 
be well fitted for Latin and Greek, the single words in 
those languages will have metrical affinity to that verse; 
the bulk of the words of four syllables, for example, would 
not carry the iambic quantity of the English word “ aban- 


Hexameters . 


121 


donment,” nor would tlie single words in general show 
alienation to consecutive long syllables, but, on the con¬ 
trary, the language, as a whole, pour forth spondees and 
dactyls in equal abundance; being, in short, an aggregate 
of metrical fragments, and affluent in either kind. With 
other material no poem of the true hexameter structure 
could be built, whatever the pains bestowed on it, and 
whatever the genius, though, with the right material, the 
noblest will almost seem to rise of itself at the Amphion- 
call of a master. 

Perhaps one test of the congeniality of a rhythm with 
a language is that of men unintentionally falling into it 
when talking or writing prose. In Latin prose several 
instances of unconscious hexameter have been noticed by 
ancient authors, and in English it is not uncommon for 
speech to fall into blank verse, but we might talk a long 
while before it fell into hexameters. The injury to the 
English poet of employing hexameter is this, that his 
garnered ideas, his dearest thoughts, unconsciously to 
himself, have associated in fragments of iambic verse ; 
and noun and epithet will have to separate and recombine 
for the alien measure. 

Who cares for further illustration of the writer’s senti¬ 
ments on this subject is referred to his work on “ Homer 
and English Metre,” p. 9, where the matter is considered 
with reference to translation. 


122 


XII. 

ON LANGUAGE-LEARNING. 

[The substance of two letters to a friend, July 9 and 24, 1858.] 

)U have hit the nail on the head. Any differ¬ 
ence on the topic will probably turn out to be 
due to misapprehension of the other’s meaning. 
I had certainly failed in conveying mine when 
you understood me to think “ that in any translation we 
must not misrepresent the word in order to adapt it to our 
own language.” General translation, or the best mode of 
conveying the contents of a foreign work to those who 
have no intention of acquiring the language in which it is 
written, was not for a moment in my mind. Such trans¬ 
lation will have special requirements of its own, varying, I 
had almost said, with each work, but certainly with each 
class of works ; requirements which will especially remove 
it from the only kind then in my thoughts, viz., translation 
made by the translator purely for the purpose of teaching 
himself the language from which he is translating, for that 
was the subject-matter of our conversation. And if, in 
the elliptic method of small chat on broad topics, I expressed 
myself too briefly, the present epistle bids fair to make 
amends. To what length the “ tediousness ” may reach 
there is no saying, till we get to “ Yours, very truly but 
whatever the amount, “ were it ten times as much, I could 
find it in my heart to bestow it all,” Ac. To resume, 
however. Such learner I would recommend to write down, 
sentence by sentence, a literal translation of the author he 
has fixed on for that purpose. But how literal ? As 
literal as he can make it without- writing; bad English. 
Idioms that he meets with, are to be given in the written 



On Language-Learning. 123 

translation literally, if the result be not bad English ; if 
it be, then put what good English comes the closest to it, 
but score under it, and refer to a literal rendering written 
in the margin. Thus, to use the illustration, “ II fait 
chaud,” “ II fait beau temps,” write in translation “ It is 
hot,” “ It is fine weather,” but in the margin give “ It 
makes hot,” “ It makes fine weather.” And be careful to 
note that the verb “ faire ” in a Frenchman’s mind means 
“ to do,” or “ to make,” likelhe facere of the Latin, whose 
child it is; and that, in his mind, it is never synonymous 
with the connecting verb “ to be,” although in phrases 
where we employ the connecting verb, their idiom employs 
the other. A Frenchman no more thinks of “ is ” when 
he says “ II fait beau temps,” than the Englishman thinks 
of “ makes ” when he says “ It is fine weather.” The 
Frenchman uses “ faire ” in that phrase as he always uses 
“ faire,” and the Englishman the verb “ to be ” as he 
employs it elsewhere. 

The philosophy that governs idiomatic expression, re¬ 
presenting, as I think it usually does, the special point of 
view from which different nations have regarded the same 
phenomenon, is an intensely interesting subject, but might 
expand into a tediousness that I have not the heart “ to 
bestow,” Ac. 

The student, however compelled to substitute another 
for the literal rendering of an idiomatic phrase, is not the 
less to clutch at the literal meaning of each word in that 
phrase, and hold it fast, and set his mark on the beast, 
that, when it appears in another flock, however its bleat be 
drowned, he may know it again. And, when he does, and 
gets within ear-shot, he will be surprised how little the 
note has changed. To drop metaphor, and speak from my 
own experience, he will find that, roundly speaking, a word 
has but one meaning ; the many meanings, that seemingly 
cluster round it, being for the most part due to context. 


124 


On Language-Learning . 

And the maimer in which a people works out all the func¬ 
tions of a word with its one meaning' is marvellous, and to 
my mind, very pregnant with matter far beyond the ordi¬ 
nary aims of language-learning, at the same time that I 
believe its consideration involves the most direct and sure 
way of attaining these. 

And here, I think, lies the main difference of opinion 
between us, viz., in my considering that in different idioms 
expressive of the same ultimate idea, the difference is due 
to the different point from which each people has chanced 
to view the same phenomenon, or rather, of a phenomenon 
that has several points of aspect, all of which it had been 
tedious, if not impossible, to express, one nation has taken 
one, and another another. Sometimes the same nation 
has appropriated several of the aspects, and used words 
accordingly expressive of each. Thus, a window is in fact 
a perforation in a wall to let in the light , and enable us to 
look through. In Hebrew, besides other words to express it, 
they have three for window, severally expressing these 
features. One occurs at Gen. viii. 6, where the word for 

? 7 

“ window ” is derived from the verb 77 n to beperforated ; 
another is at Gen. vi. 16, where is just one of our terms 
for it, “ light ” ; the third is at Kings vii. 5, where 

“ window,” in our version rendered “ light ” in the sense 
of window, is expressed by a word derived from nrn, he 

O T T 7 

hath seen. 

Suppose Hebrew the study, the translation would give, 
in each of the above cases, “ window ,” but, in margin, 
would appear the literal meaning, showing in the first that 
the word was not merely “ window,” but “ window ” con¬ 
sidered as “perforation ;” in the second, as an inlet of 
“ light and, in the third, as an “ outlook .” 

In running comment on the instances put by you, per¬ 
mit me to say that “II fait chaud ” was probably said 


125 


On Language-Learning. 

before barometer was thought of. Why they use it may 
be hard to tell, but they do use it. The matter runs into 
the philosophy of impersonal verbs. To what are they due ? 
I know not; perhaps they root in paganism, when every 
thing was referred to active agency, and then would be 
equivalent to aliquis clens, &c. 

Before rendering your facetious instance 4 of “ Green 
Man and Still ” into French, one should know what it 
really means. Is “ still ” an adjective or a substantive, 
and, if the latter, does it designate the sacred source of 
“ mountain dew,” or is it a corruption of “ stile ?” In any 
way I fear it would prove recalcitrant to translation, literal 
or other, and therefore, like proper names or designation 
of an individual that hath no congeners, to be carted into 
the other tongue in the lump, and packed in inverted 
commas. 

The Frenchman’s merry version of “ out, brief candle !” 
“ sortez,petite ehandelle /” happens to be no translation at 
all, but just what was possible where the original was not 
understood. How a Frenchman, who had reached the 
meaning, would render it in his own tongue, I cannot 
say. French is too brittle for packing Shakespeare’s bold 
metaphors, but “ Eteins-toi, breve ehandelle !” might do 
for the marginal rendering, with a sub-note on the idiomatic 
force of the preposition “ out.” 

As to “fast young man,” have you been able to define 
that thing precisely, so, for instance, as to meet the case 
of “ a fast young man ” and “ fast young lady ?” They 
have the genus, doubtless, in the French capital, in all its 
varieties, from its most venial to its worst phase; and 
having it they have, doubtless, some word or phrase to 
express it. That word or phrase should down in 'the 
translation, but, in the margin, a note on “ fast ” to the 
effect that it retains its leading idea of swift, though 
applied to a headlong moral career, or a swift impatience 


126 On Language-Learning . 

of ordinary forms. In proof of its being so, cite its con¬ 
verse “ slow.” 

“ How d’ye do?” should be so dealt with by the accu¬ 
rate Frenchman, giving “ Comment vous portez-vous ?” 
as the equivalent, with a note in the margin to mark the 
difference of “ faire ” and “ porter and, if he be of a 
philosophical turn, groaning, perhaps, over the marked 
difference between the two, the one referring to “ business,” 
to “ work,” and the other simply to “ deportment.” 

“ Es gieht in diesem Gegend viele Diebe,” might be 
rendered (t There are many thieves,” &c. but, in the 
margin, a note to fix the literal meaning of “ giebt,” ob¬ 
serving how the idiom is that of an agricultural people, who 
have here spoken as they would of the “ y ield ” of their 
land .—July 9, 1858. 


XIII. 

ON LANGUAGE-LEARNING. 

( Continued .) 

ET the shade of Ilorne Tooke settle the con¬ 
sequences of disputing his authority, mine is 
less easily questioned, as it must first have been 
claimed. And were I tenfold entitled, I could 
scarcely claim what, in these matters, my habits of mind 
will allow me to admit but provisionally, as an ingredient 
of inquiry. Authority hath large and necessary functions 
in this world of ours, and without her, and her step¬ 
daughter Truth, we should make but dreary work of it 
here. But when she pushes her family pretensions, and 
claims Conviction also for her child, then comes the com¬ 
motion, and a cloud of confusion springs up, which pike and 
gun, and Smitkficld fires, will not always effectually clear. 







127 


On Language-Learning . 

In our hunt for truth, however, we scarcely need such 
deadly weapons, but, to borrow Bacon’s beautiful illustra¬ 
tion, may sally forth with argumentative cross-bow, whose 
bolts fly with a force quite irrespective of the hand that 
wields it. It will not do to run metaphor into allegory, or 
I should say of our little battue in this matter, that we are 
like sportsmen in a tropical forest, who, being minded to 
bring down a bird, find they have started more troublesome 
quarry in a rhinoceros that they hear crashing through 
the trees in their direction on one side, and a tiger stealing 
up the jungle towards them on the other. One such for¬ 
midable shape your suggestive letter hath stirred in the 
metaphorical force of words, which would open up a world 
of enquiry as to the first formation of language, and its 
nature as an instrument of thought, as well as of communi¬ 
cation. The other monster is the Philosophy of Titles. 
For my part I get me up in all haste into a tree, whither I 
suppose you to follow, and there, after the first congratula¬ 
tions on escaping their jaws for the nonce, we chat over the 
day’s sport, in which we correct mistakes that each may 
have been under as to what the other was aiming at in the 
course of it. 

I quite agree with you as to the importance of the in¬ 
structor above any system by which he instructs, and I 
equally agree with you as to idiosyncracy and its peculiar 
power of grappling with what it takes to, and finding its 
own roads. Modes and methods are not for such. Who 
would go about to invent a method for the “ Calculating 
Boy?” But the average are capable of exertion without 
necessarily having, especially when young, the faculty of 
its instinctive direction. In the absence, then, of any 
special plan of his own, I invite the young man, or his in¬ 
structor (according as the learner be proceeding proprio 
Mcirte, or sub auspice ) to consider this. Whatever your 
aim in learning a language it will scarcely fail to include 


128 


On Language-Learning. 

accurate and easy perusal of some book of compass in it. 
He who can read such book with facility and accuracy, 
must by hook or crook, have obtained competent knowledge 
of three things ; 1st, of the inflection of words, or all we 
sum under the term accidence ; 2nd, of their structural 
arrangement and government in a sentence, i. e., syntax ; 
3rd, the words themselves, as so many signs of ideas, or, 
to express it shortly, the vocabulary. These three form, as 
it were, the arch of the business, of which the keystone is 
the last. 

In saying they constitute an arch is implied that I would 
not bate a jot of either. The first two are not so hard to 
acquire as to retain, and they want the keystone of the 
third, or language-knowledge, to keep them together. I 
would therefore use the book itself as the instrument for 
acquiring, or rather clenching, the knowledge that reading 
it implies. The accidence and syntax, to change the 
figure, are a ^wasi-theoretical anatomy of which the book 
furnishes a body for practical operation. Suppose the 
language to be Latin, and the book to be Caesar, I would 
have the leading forms of the declensions of nouns and 
adjectives learnt by heart, including, of course, the pro¬ 
nouns ; the same of the four conjugations of regular verbs, 
and also the irregular, without, at present, regarding the 
defective verbs, or the exceptional matter, that falls under 
the other hands. This, with reading over the leading 
rules of the syntax, will be sufficient apparatus for at once 
seizing the scalpel, and completing your knowledge of the 
osteology and muscular arrangement, on the subject itself, 
by attacking the book, and translating sentence by sentence, 
not a whit neglecting to carry on the study of the acci¬ 
dence and syntax to its just completion at the same time, 
learning by heart all that shall be judged desirable to learn 
by heart. And this will not be made less pleasurable 
for finding what you learn in the grammar continually 


129 


On Language-Learning. 

illustrated, and often anticipated by your text-book. And in 
the margin of your text-book, if it be large enough, re¬ 
ference might be profitably made to page and section of 
grammar containing the rule, that such and such a sentence 
illustrates. By this method your text will have covered 
most of your grammar, and the knowledge of both be in¬ 
separably clenched. The main labour is the labour of 
translation, which, however, must be done some time or 
other, in some way or other, is done by hundreds every 
day, for boys are constantly employed in translating Latin 
into English, and English into Latin; painfully turning 
Latin into English, and ten times more painfully turning 
English into Latin. In the method before us Latin will 
be, more or less painfully, turned into English; with a 
painfulness that is, however, constantly decreasing, and 
which includes, not a painful, but easy and pleasant turn¬ 
ing English into Latin, which is one sorrow, and a sore 
one, less than what lies at the other door. So, at the end 
of the operation of dealing with the one book, the student 
has an English Caesar, supposing that to be the book 
selected, which he can read off in the purest Latin, for he 
has been doing it all along. Thus armed he can march 
where he pleases, the difficulties he will encounter being 
much of the nature of those he might encounter in his own 
language, depending more or less on his intimacy with the 
subject-matter of the book. 

The grand features of the plan are, not shirking labour; 
for nothing worth having was ever yet obtained without it, 
but encouraging, and concentrating that labour, first by 
presenting a nucleus round which all your knowledge can 
cluster, and next by easy unintermitted repetitions, that 
forbid its escaping you. Thrice the labour, however, is 
often expended, and much efficiency of a certain kind at¬ 
tained, but, for want of being clenched by straightforward 
seizure of the faculty of reading pleasurably and easily, 

K 


130 


On Language-Learning. 

some book in the language, the whole gradually falls away 
and lives but among the regrets of life, and a severe one if 
it were not so general, viz., that of having bestowed seven 
or eight years on a language, and coming away with no 
command over its literature. 

Before leaving this subject I shall observe that parsing 
every word, until parsing grew unnecessary, would be a 
part of the plan ; the essence of the business being, as I 
said, not to shirk but economise, to clutch all and part 
with nothing. 

This somewhat lengthy restatement of so fibrous a matter 
will still leave much unsaid; but of words there is no end, 
saitli Solomon, so we must make one, and turn to the 
other parts of your letter. In translating “ II fait chaud ” 
by “ It is hot,” and relegating “ make ” to the margin, I 
should have no apprehension of the student, whom I sup¬ 
pose to make the translation himself, falling into the mis¬ 
take you allude to. I suppose him to know his own 
language, and especially wish him to eschew all attempt at 
turning the idioms of that language into the one he is 
learning, and vice versa. The idioms of two languages 
rarely correspond, it is purely accidental when they do, and 
it is mere milking a bull to attempt their assimilation. 
My student I should expect to carry away this idea 
of (( faire,” that it means “to do” or “to make;” the 
facere of the Latin, and that it is always one or other in 
French, when it is used, although the French do not always 
use it where we English should say “ do,” or “ make; ” 
and, on the other hand do use it when the English do not. 
He will break up the idiomatic phrases to get at the mean¬ 
ing of the constituent words in the language to which the 
idiom belongs, viz., the language he is studying. The 
use of the word there is what he is in search of, and he will 
not be troubled by the corresponding word in his own 


131 


On Language-Learning. 

tongue not being used on the same occasion. The word is 
the same in each case, however employed by the respective 
owner, viz., the tongue it belongs to. And, as a French¬ 
man and an Englishman may be walking in Paris, each 
with his parapluie, and the Frenchman puts up his to 
screen him from the sun, and the Englishman reserves his 
against the rain, the instrument is the same in both cases, 
though the use to which the owner puts it be not so. So 
“ faire ” forgoes none of its qualities for not appearing in 
the French phrase, “II me met en colere,” to correspond with 
its cousin on this side the water in “ He makes me angry.” 
The cousin had better prove his kinship by retiring also, 
and giving place to “ He puts me in a passion.” 

Accurate note of corresponding idioms in the two lan¬ 
guages, when they occur, would be proper enough, and, if 
the student have any breadth, he will not allow them to 
escape him ; but it will be en passant, he will not go out 
of his way for it. Nor has it anything to do with the main 
object, grappling with the precise meaning of the foreign 
wmrd, and its precise functions, not only in the sentence, 
where he first made its acquaintance, but everywhere. 
And here comes the point. If, at his first acquaintance, 
he strip the word of the accidental notions which are apt 
to cleave to it in any particular sentence, and which are 
purely due to context, and get at its primary and inherent 
meaning, he will find there the force and spirit of the word, 
the rest being but colouring of the pure alcohol. The ap¬ 
parent uncouthness of some of its applications must not 
startle ; for it is apparent only, and owing to his judging 
it by an alien standard, viz., that of his own tongue. The 
sooner he is out of that groove the sooner will he slide into 
that of the people, whose tongue he is desirous of acquir¬ 
ing, and get to think in the language. This he will 
scarcely do while all his intellectual specie is in English 


132 


On Language-Learning. 

currency, which he has to change, piece by piece, into 
francs and sous, as he wants them.* 

And this one-meaning feature of words is in no way, 
believe me, impugned by there being three Hebrew words 
for “ window.” And, pardon me, is there not some in¬ 
advertence in thinking that three words meaning the same 
thing impugn the proposition that one word has rarely 
more than one meaning? If Smith, Brown, and Bobin- 
son have each the repute of courting but one lady at a 
time, would that be impeached by their all three serenad¬ 
ing some one fair, the common object of their solicitude ? 
Whatever number of buckets of cold water, one or three, 
she might consider adequate recompense for the attention, 
she would scarcely adduce it in support of a charge of 
general flirtation. So of our Hebrew serenaders who have 
met under the same window —the only point at which they 
are likely to meet. 

And this very use of the three or four Hebrew words illus¬ 
trates the force of what I have advanced, of the permanent 
value of clinging to the root-meaning of each word. For 
in the meaning of every word there is 1st, What the word 
means in itself. 2nd, What it conveys by context. 
What it means in itself is usually a general idea of which 

* Children get into the foreign groove with marvellous facility, 
and here lies, I may state en passant, a strong objection I have against 
introducing them to foreign tongues too early. It tends to de¬ 
nationalize and deprive them of that unconscious early education, 
which the mother-tongue alone can give, and for which nothing can 
compensate, making him heritor of the ages. To deprive an English 
child, or abridge him, of the intellectual atmosphere of his native 
language too early, and confuse its modes of thought with those of 
any other nation, be it France, or Italy, or Germany, or Spain, is a 
great mistake. An equal mistake it were to deal with a child of 
either of those countries, even to substitute the rich influences of the 
English tongue, if it make him halting and strange in his own. A 
Sandwich Islander, or a Huron or other barbarian, may lose little by 
such process, but with the child of any highly civilized people it is 
otherwise. 


133 


On Language-Learning. 

the context restricts the generality. The first meaning is 
that which has to be firmly clutched, and is the key to 
what the word will mean wherever it may occur. The 
context-sense terminates, so to speak, in the passage where 
it occurs, and breeds nothing. 

The difference is vast. The four Hebrew words alluded 
to spring from four several roots, and each always carries 
with it its one root-meaning ; and by context only do they 
each mean “ window,” a context which carves a special 
meaning out of the general one. But though all four 
happen to meet at one point in this case, and designate 
the same thing, they each do it in its own way, quite dis¬ 
tinct from either of the others. These leading roots, for I 
will not encumber you with the Hebrew again, are, we will 
say, 1st, Perforation, 2nd, Outlook, 3rd, Light. These 
three meet at “ window,” where the general idea of per¬ 
foration is narrowed to a special kind of perforation, viz., 
that of a wall; outlook to a special kind of outlook , viz., 
through a wall; and light to a special kind, viz., that 
admitted through a wall. 



i 





134 On Language-Learning. 

These three, observe, coming* from different directions, 
meet at one point, “ window but they pass through, and 
their paths separate immediately, each in its original 
direction. The student, that in these several passages 
contents him with obtaining the word u window ” for each 
will have obtained a meaning of comparatively little value. 
He may read and read without its again recurring. But 
he that seizes the one original meaning in each case, and 
learns of all of them, not only that they mean “ window,” 
but in what manner “ window,” possesses that which will 
enable him to deal with them whenever he encounters them 
in other company, though as “ window ” he may meet 
them no more. 

Your suggestion of the metaphor, though ingeniously 
put, and the instances you give very curious, seems hardly 
to apply here, because in ordinary metaphor you do not 
depart from the literal meaning of the words themselves. 
When you say, praising a man’s courage, that “ he is a 
lion,” you still use the word in its original sense, there is no 
derivative or secondary meaning about it. This will be 
more apparent if you convert the metaphor into the direct 
simile of which it is the compression, and say “ he is like a 
lion.” The word itself has no more parted with its mean¬ 
ing than in an allegory. Very different is it, for instance, 
when we use the word “ fly ” for a carriage, and the 
French “ diligence ”for their old vehicle. If, in an account 
of the Turks, we speak of their calling the Christians 
“ dogs,” the meaning of the word is not departed from, as 
when we use “ dogs ” to designate the irons for placing 
the logs across in a wood fire. The idea that a foreign 
student would get of the word “ lion ” in the metaphor 
would preclude his having to look out the word afterwards 
if he were reading Livingstone, and lighted on his 
encounter with two of those animals. 

As to the other instances, that are not metaphorical, I 


135 


On Language-Learning. 

scarcely see your difficulty. If a phrase stand for an in¬ 
dividual thing it is like a proper name, which it were as 
absurd to translate as to put “ Old City ” instead of “ Citta 
Vecchia,” the town in Italy. But although he cannot 
English that town, in speaking or writing of it, the student 
would be very dull if he failed, in his own mind, to fasten 
on the constituent ideas that went to the naming of it, and 
get thence two words, which will serve him everywhere, 
though he never meet with further mention of the place— 
viz., the Italian for “ city ” and for “ old.” So in the 
instances you name: in all of them “ ardent ” means 
“ burning,” and “ chambre,” chamber ; “ chapelle ,” 

chapel. But of the particular combinations “ chambre 
ardente ” and “ chapelle ardente ,” he will give them as 
they are, and treat them as proper names. In so doing, 
however, he will not the less advert to the significance of 
the adjective, giving, as it does, historical expression to the 
use and object of the things themselves, which it could not 
have done divorced from its own meaning. Time may 
have impaired the appropriateness of the epithet, but at 
the christening there was something applicable, which 
something the literal meaning of the adjective will still 
yield. “ Chambre ardente ” is no inappropriate designa¬ 
tion for a place where the only criminals tried were those 
whose sentence, if condemned, would be “ burning.” And 
“ chapelle ardente ” is equally appropriate for a chapel 
(usually one out of several in a large cathedral) where the 
corpse lay in state with candles burning about it. 

The inadmissibility of a literal rendering in these cases 
into the text of his translation should no more trouble the 
student, or put him from his general method, than its being 
forbidden him to render Monsieur Louis Blanc by Mr. 
Louis White, until that gentleman choose to translate him¬ 
self into our vernacular, as Melancthon and Erasmus 
translated themselves out of theirs .—July 24, 1858. 


136 


XIV. 

HORACE AND HIS TRANSLATORS. 

HE lyrical part of Horace can never be pro¬ 
perly translated. This was the opinion of 
Johnson, and among his correct opinions. As 
a whole the Odes present insuperable obstacles 
to any one translator; and ages may pass, as they have 
passed, without each separate Ode finding its proper man, 
and so in the aggregate a fit version grow up to the delec¬ 
tation of some future generation. 

About the importance of the task, there may he differ¬ 
ence of opinion, but its difficulty, nay its impossibility, has 
been pretty generally admitted by all save the several 
doughty knights that have attempted it. I am not aware, 
however, that the difficulty has been ever referred to the 
true cause, which lies much deeper than the specialties that 
have been ordinarily assigned. These, indeed, are strong, 
but not insuperable, and lie partly in what directly regards 
the translator, as the curiosa felicitas of his author, which 
will tax his ingenuity in finding equivalents in his own 
tongue ; and partly in the minds of his readers, as the 
different state of manners or allusions to customs and the 
like, which but a small number of readers will now be 
qualified to understand or sympathize with. But this last 
class rather narrows the number of readers than touches 
the quality of the book. Translation is good or bad quite 
irrespectively of whether it be generally relished or not. 
Some portion of the preparation required to understand the 
original, is always necessary to full enjoyment of the best 
translation. Some portion of the original, great or small, 
according to its breadth or large human reach, would 






Horace and his Translators. 137 

interest without previous preparation; that portion will, 
according to the intrinsic interest of the subject itself, yield 
the exact measure of the popularity a good translation may 
expect. To augment that portion at the expense of the 
original, may popularize the translation, but will vitiate its 
quality. The book that requires much of this treatment 
ought not to be translated at all. This, however, by the 
way: “ revenons a nos moutons .” 

The grand cause of the Lyrics of Horace, as a whole, 
never having been well translated, though separate Odes 
have been, is in my opinion roundly this, that the prime 
requisite for a translator, viz., to he in the author’s own mood 
for the matter, in the very key in which he saw and sang about 
the thing is, in this case, all but impossible. To translate 
an Ode well you must work yourself into the state of mind 
and feeling with regard to it in which the author wrote it. 
This will often be hard with any one Ode ; what then are 
the chances with them all ? The translator must catch 
the mantle of inspiration from his original, if he would 
speak in the same vein. But, alas ! who is to be there 
when the mantle falls? Time and occasion are to be 
patiently watched, and are hard to catch. And though by 
licence of Parnass, we suppose the shade of the ancient 
singer to be helpfully hovering over the honest translator 
that means him well, yet no translator can be better 
circumstanced than Horace himself; and what was his 
posture to these Odes ? Did he sit down and say, “ I will 
now write me four Books of Odes upon every possible sub¬ 
ject in my way, expecting to fall into the mood for each as 
I go along, from the first ode of the first book to the last 
of the fourth.” Yet this, or something like it, the whole¬ 
sale translator undertakes to do ; and this is precisely what 
Horace did not; and would have joyously laughed at the 
very notion of doing. No ; but it was thus. Occasion 
here, occasion there, possessed the impressionable mind of 


138 


Horace and his Translators. 


the poet for the time, and, under its influence, an ode was 
thrown off, which under other influences, or at another time 
he would not, or could not have done. Horace himself 
could not have reproduced his odes, any more than he could 
have reproduced the occasions under which they were 
written. A transposition of the epochs of any of the odes, 
could that have been possible, might have found him in no 
mood for the substituted ode. How cumulative then are 
the impediments in the way of a translator’s dealing’ with 
them as a whole. The more intimately such translator 
shall have wrought himself into rapport with one ode, the 
worse his mood probably for the next, which is totally 
different, and has no connection with it. 

A long consecutive poem, as a drama or an epic, is for 
the same reason, on a very different footing. There, once 
in the mood, once in harmony with the original, you grow 
more and more so, and your facility of translating increases 
as you go, till you get almost a faculty of supplying a gap 
in the original, or at least what shall not contradict it in 
feeling and drift, however short in actual power. You 
will have acquired an impetus which will speed you of 
itself, while with a book of odes, on the contrary, it is con¬ 
tinually a drawing up and starting afresh. 

Another difficulty that Horace offers to a translator of 
the Odes, is that so much has been borrowed from a Greek 
original; a circumstance that strips it of its suggestiveness. 
And this is too much a feature with Latin authors, and 
especially of the Augustan age. Like our Queen Anne 
writers, that which thev. wrote is written out, and nothing 
suggested. What I mean is, that in reading, you take 
what is given, but it does not breed in your mind, as with 
the more original Greek writers. I am speaking of poets. 
Virgil in this way marvellously contrasts with Homer. 
With Homer you get to know as much about the thing as 
he does himself, so graphically, so suggestively, is it 


False Grounds J'or Obvious Duties. 139 

brought before you. Y ou could go on and write more 
about it, and in the same vein—I do not say with the same 
ability—and be sure you were right. But with Virgil you 
could not. A step from where he puts you, may land you 
in limbo, for aught you know ; so bald and indefinite is his 
overlaudcd copy from the affluent original of Homer. 


XY. 


FALSE GROUNDS FOR OBVIOUS DUTIES. 

MAN was standing on the high bank of a 
pleasant river, the ground firm, and no fear of 
its slipping from under him to the risk of his 
toppling into the stream. After standing some 
time, and viewing the whereabouts, he was minded to lean 
with his arms on a wooden bar that was supported by 
upright wooden rests, and promised pleasantly to one who 
should so use it as a window-sill, and look down on the 
swift-gliding river, of which the bank was rather steep 
and high at this spot. The bar, however, had a defect 
not uncommon with wooden, as well as other structures, 
with process of time. That terrible sly old edax rerum had 
applied his tooth to the supports of this bar at the bottom, 
and next the river especially. Our contemplator, what 
with the weight of his reflections and the avoirdupois of his 
person, was too much for what he leant on. It gave way, 
and into the river he fell, beyond all possibility of saving 
himself. We have only to hope he could swim, and so 
ultimately floundered to dry land. With his fate, however, 
we have nothing to do, but only with the moral of his 
disaster, viz. that he damaged his safe upright position by 



140 False Grounds for Obvious Duties . 

choosing to lean upon something that courted his lazy 
reliance. 

Those who give false grounds for truth, however plau¬ 
sible, risk a moral catastrophe for their pupils, as fatal and 
as needless as the accident we have recorded. There is 
too much tendency to catch up the first truth that comes 
to hand, and use it for the nonce, with a want of care or 
candour very ill-becoming in one erring mortal to another. 
But it is always mischievous to urge the right thing upon 
wrong grounds. Inter alia, for instance, it were unwise 
to dissuade from suicide, and ground the reason on the 
commandment which says, “ Thou shalt not kill.” That, 
indeed, is a plain, direct, easy thing to lean on if it would 
support you. You may call it self-murder, and triumph¬ 
antly claim the prohibition of murder as including it. But 
the murder the lawgiver contemplated was not the murder 
you think of; and, in proof, your pupil will only have to 
read on, and see what punishment is awarded to the mur¬ 
derer, and the result will not heighten his opinion of the 
sagacity or candour of his instructor. He will there find 
no mention of burial in the cross-roads, and other Chris¬ 
tian methods of punishing the crime, by afflicting the 
unoffending and distressed relatives of the deceased, but 
life for life the ultimate punishment, and cities of refuge, 
with composition with the relatives of the deceased, in 
case of accidental unpremeditated homicide. 

The reasons against suicide are inferential from the 
general scope of the Christian scheme as regulating this 
life of probation, which such crime hath tendency to 
abridge and interfere with, <fcc. &c. Nor is it the only 
ill thing that is not expressly prohibited by that scheme, 
though alien to it. Slavery is nowhere forbidden, but, on 
the contrary, assumed as part of the social state at its 
promulgation, and yet who doubts that one of the inevitable 
and sweet consequences of a pure vital Christian influence 


On Learning Modern Languages. 141 

on society would be its disappearance ? It must dry off 
in the very glow of it. And every consequence included 
in the scheme, and necessary to its full development, is 
fairly included in the intention of its Divine Founder, by 
whom all is foreseen and provided for. If this great 
thing, one of the largest benefits on this side the grave 
that the Christian religion has conferred on society, be not 
referable to express enactment, why distress ourselves for 
the absence of it in matter of less practical importance ? 
The bias of men is not to self-slaughter, and, in the state 
a man must have reached to come to that, it will not do 
to palm a pretence upon him which, discovered to be false, 
is fatal to the amiable design of the deceit. Say the De¬ 
calogue forbids suicide, and the slightest consideration of 
the matter confutes you, and the man may infer that there 
is no objection to it but what lies there, and so conclude 
it lawful. But say that it is inconsistent with the scheme 
of Divine revelation, and of this life as a state of proba¬ 
tion, which we are not at our pleasure to abridge, you 
put it on a ground from which he is at least unlikely to 
gather certainty for his fatal views, even if he fail of the 
contrary conviction. 


XVI. 

ON LEARNING MODERN LANGUAGES, AND 
WHEN TO BEGIN. 

ET education be vernacular. Let a German 
be German, a Frenchman French, and an 
Englishman English. A savage may gain by 
losing or exchanging his nationality, but no 
member of a civilized community. There is that teaching, 
and that value in national character, held in solution in its 






142 On Learning Modern Languages , 

customs and its tongue, for the loss of which to a native 
nothing can compensate. 

Unless for economy or other obvious and special advan¬ 
tage, let not your boy hear the sound of any continental 
tongue till he he eleven or twelve. No French servants and 
nurses about your children—often ignorant people, who can 
talk their own tongue fluently, but whose ignorance upon all 
points, and whose notions of morals, often, are not such as 
you would pass in an English person ; why then in a 
stranger ? She need not be defective in conscience, but, 
from difference of manners, the conscience, or the notion 
of honour, if you will, is often on different points to ours. 
By this your child gets the mind of an alien, which, con¬ 
sidering the national teaching of every tongue, is in itself 
an incurable calamity. 

Reverence for truth and self-respect, convertible terms, 
are the basis of English character,—it is the stamp of a 
free, self-governing people. Beware how you tamper with 
it in your child by contact, in early impressible age, with 
one of whom you know nothing, and can know nothing; 
for a foreigner is a sealed book to you. Those niceties in 
language, manners, and that indescribable something which 
mark nationality, and which form a field on which the 
native can well judge of the native, are precisely what you 
are shut out of in judging of the person to whom you dare 
to intrust your innocent and helpless child. Employ your 
own countrywomen ; you can judge of them much better. 
If the Englishwoman’s antecedents be unsatisfactory, they 
will show themselves by some unguarded phrase, a word, 
a look, a gesture, which are of unmistakeable significance 
to the native, but of which a foreigner could not judge. 
The butler, the lady’s-maid, or the fast character, might 
put the pass on a foreigner for station and character, 
despite of slips and inadvertencies that would betray them 
to a countrywoman. 


143 


And when to begin. 

So much, then, against too early commencing with 
modern languages, and now for a word or two on the re¬ 
quisites for entering on their study. 

I suppose the reader will gladly be spared a shower of 
truisms on the true principle of preference in some things, 
as of building to scaffold, jewels to casket, joint to the 
dish it is served in. The ultimate object is the thing to 
be considered. And the ultimate use of language- 
learning for your son, 0 practical man, is, I take it, that 
what he knows in English he shall readily express, or, at 
least understand when it is expressed, in German, French, 
Italian, or Spanish. If so, there is need that he know 
something in English ; and the measure of that something, 
believe me, lies at the bottom of the whole business. 
There is the great snag that founders much parental 
anxiety and hope, and much juvenile exertion that way. 
German is so hard, they say; hard to speak, and hard to 
read. It has its difficulties, undoubtedly, but there is an 
additional cause of difficulty brought by the student too 
often. He cannot speak in it, for he has nothing to say; 
he cannot read in it, for all important matter, for which 
the language is wanted in his case, would be hard to him 
in English. 

What is the remedy ? The disease is its own physician, 
and prescribes vernacular culture as the only true cure, or, 
rather, preventive. Let every English boy be well up in all 
that can be wholesomely taught him in English, and 
familiar with English thought. Let his English atmo¬ 
sphere be strong about him. Let it cleave to him through 
life: it will not a whit impair his power of mastering 
foreign phases of thought, and expressing himself with 
force, and power, and persuasion, if need be, in any 
tongue he may desire. And his force that way will not 
be impaired, nor his influence less, for his national cha¬ 
racter and free nature finding expression, and not a cloak, 


144 On Learning Modern Languages , 

in foreign speech. That he will not often he taken for a 
foreigner it may he; I fervently hope it will be. What 
is the advantage of being taken for what you are not ? 
There is always a little nonsense at bottom of this sort of 
thing. I doubt if in one case in a thousand a foreigner 
ever mistakes an Englishman for a countryman of his 
own. Is there calamity in this ? Better this than the 
real calamity of returning to our shores, and being mis¬ 
taken for a foreigner from speaking our noble tongue with 
the accent and indecision of an alien. 

Of one thing clear your mind. Progress in this way 
is limited. To speak and write one or two languages, 
besides your own, in their full force and precision, in the 
very utmost perfection, is the extent that a man, who has 
aught else to do, should desire, and far beyond the ma¬ 
jority. To learn several languages, so as to obtain a 
mastery over their literature, ay, and enter into the inner 
sanctuary of vernacular enjoyment, can be done, and is 
done, with no interference with more serious pursuits, but 
rather as a help to them. But the peculiar kind of 
mastery involved in speaking and writing them in perfec¬ 
tion is, first, from the difficulty of attaining it, and next, 
from the still greater difficulty of keeping up the know¬ 
ledge, a thing beyond all measure exceeding its value, and 
an acquisition that cannot be hoped for but at the cost of 
the individual. It may be done by him who will do nothing 
else; is done, for the speaking part, by a whole class, 
the couriers throughout Europe, in their small way; but 
in a way that would cost a cultivated man the best part 
of a valuable life to attain. Such prostitution of mental 
power, were it likely or common, would make the disper¬ 
sion at Babel indeed a calamity. 

And what does such proficiency amount to ? “ How do 
you do ? ” in a leash of languages, is, after all, but “ How 
do you do ? ” and “ Very well, I thank you,” on the largest 


145 


And when to begin. 

Mezzofanti scale, does not carry it marvellously further. 
Seriously, there is one fact, and none the less important for 
being often lost sight of, viz. that conversation, such as you 
get in this way, is of very limited compass, and when you 
have swallowed the very best Manuel du Voyageur, dia¬ 
logues, vocabulary, and all, yea, till they are a part of you, 
you have made but little way in the language, and yet 
as much way as you are likely to make on that track. 
You may do all that, and yet not read a book of any 
reach. I was told of an English painter in Italy, who 
had been in the country for several years, and could talk 
the language very well, but could not read an Italian 
newspaper. 

You may he, according to your notions, fluent in 
speaking a language, say German or French. You talk 
with Frenchmen, and you talk with Germans, and they 
with you, and you get on very well. But has it ever 
occurred to you to try and put down what you have talked 
about? If not, do so next time, and you will find that 
what you talked of was very little, and will pack in small 
compass, and this not from any terseness in you or the 
alien. You will, perhaps, note that there were words 
here and there that you did not understand, and this thing 
or that just mentioned, and no more. All was light and 
easy, as conversation should be, with no attempt at fathom¬ 
ing—especially with your plummet-line. But what of 
those words, which you did not understand, and those 
topics that were not pressed? Simply this, that the 
foreigner, in talking to you, talked what he thought you 
could understand, and with the tact and consideration 
which foreigners often exhibit, accommodated himself to 
the limits of your vocabulary. But if you would test your 
talking capabilities in any tongue listen to two foreigners 
conversing together in that tongue, and then tell me how 
much you catch of their discourse. And do not flatter 

L 


146 


On Pindar and the 


yourself that you fail of understanding them for their quick 
speaking : foreigners do not, in general, speak so quick 
as we English do in their tongue. It is rather because 
the words they use are out of the range of your hold of 
the language—perhaps of your ideas. How much do you 
understand of every conversation, above mere chit-chat, 
that takes place among your own countrymen ? Can there 
be no topics started with which you are unfamiliar, and 
which yet, by the interest they excite, and otherwise, you 
would not disparage as unworthy to be known? Sup¬ 
pose the talkers to have been foreigners, and conversing in 
their own tongue, how would you have understood them, 
though you knew that tongue as well as your own ? What 
is the necessary pre-condition of your understanding the 
talk in either case? Plainly this, that you should be 
acquainted with the subject. Acquaint yourself, there¬ 
fore, with as many subjects as you can, get all the in¬ 
formation you can in your own language as a founda¬ 
tion for talking, reading, writing, and understanding in 
another. 


XVII. 

OX PINDAR AND THE SO-CALLED 
PINDARIC. 



^^^HE function of poetry is rather to remind than 
inform, to recall vividly that with which we are 


not unfamiliar, than to communicate absolutely 
new knowledge. This truth, consciously or 
not, will be found to lie at the root of all ancient art-work. 
The subjects of their poems, and their sculpture, were 
broadly familiar to the people. Their epics, and their 
serious dramas, were notoriously from their history and 




so-called Pindaric. 


147 


religion. The epic and the tragic muse in no instance 
departed from this, the necessary law; and, if the comic 
seemed to claim exemption, it was but seeming ; for, if the 
incidents were new, they were so imbedded in the known, 
familiar, every-day customs of the people, that the new¬ 
ness was reduced to its minimum. The story was the 
simplest; for complexity of interest—an involved Spanish 
plot, for example—a Greek would have rejected as a com¬ 
plicate confusion, incompatible with the clearness and calm, 
in which alone beauty, as they understood it, could grow 
up. Hence their poverty of plot, hence their little scruple 
in repeating it, as we find Menander did, according to 
Terence. 

And I am not sure that we should conclude the plot of 
any of Menander’s plays to have been new to the audience 
at the first representation of the piece. The antiquity of 
apparently modern stories is very great. A fund of float¬ 
ing lore of this cast would seem to have been the 
eg cut of our race from the earliest period, and to have clung 
to them in all their migrations and vicissitudes. Story¬ 
telling was a necessity of unreading ages, as newspapers 
are of the present day, where they are to be had. The 
stories would have a chameleon-like facility of colouring to 
the manners of a tribe, changing to all its changes, while 
the substance remained. 

A well-known story, that used to appear in our books 
of natural history, among anecdotes of dogs, affords an 
illustration of a seemingly modern anecdote dating indefi¬ 
nitely back to a very remote antiquity ; I allude to that of 
the countryman, who went to his work leaving his child in 
the cradle in charge of his dog, and returning and seeing 
the cradle overturned, and covered with blood, and the 
dog running to meet him with jaws also dropping blood, 
concluded it to have gone mad and destroyed the child, 
and so he killed the poor animal on the spot. Then pro- 


148 


On Pindar and the 


ceeding to set the cradle right, found the child alive and 
well, and, searching further, came upon a dead wolf, which 
his faithful dog had encountered and slain in the child’s 
defence. This story, under the title of the Knight and 
the Serpent, appears in that favourite of the Middle Ages, 
“ The Seven Wise Masters,” a collection of stories derived 
from the ancient Sanskrit original of what the Arabs and 
Persians call the “ Book of Calila and Dimna.” See 
L’Oiseleur Deslongschamps, “Essai sur les Fables Indi- 
ennes,” Paris, 1838. 

To return, however, to our subject, the affluent genius 
of Shakespeare recognized, in his practice, the principle of 
working on the known and familiar as a foundation, and 
rarely, if ever, condescended to invent a plot; but, in his 
histories, followed the chroniclers, and, in his tragedies 
and comedies, took the stories that had been common 
European property before his time. And this too had been 
the practice of the ancients. Notoriety of subject was a 
necessity of poem or play. An ancient legend answered 
this ; or a recent fact, if known to all, would equally answer 
it. Hence the odes of Pindar were upon a notorious fact 
at which all were present, and so as notorious as the 
International Exhibition is with us of this present year 
1862. 

Ignorance of this prominent feature of ancient art, its 
election of the familiar, has made many entirely miss the 
spirit of the ancient original that they have set themselves 
to copy. This misapprehension, in kind, prevails more or 
less, as to all the great poets of antiquity, and shows itself 
often in translations, and yet oftener in the so-called imita¬ 
tions of their manner. But of them all, perhaps Pindar 
has been the subject of the greatest misconception. His 
mode of treatment of subject, in the odes that have come 
down to us, has been so little understood that the term 
Pindaric has become suggestive, I had almost said the 


so-called Pindaric . 


149 


synonyme, of abrupt and startling transition. The modern 
writers of odes which they call Pindaric, with Cowley at 
their head, would seem to have thought that they might 
say what they pleased, and how they pleased, leave their 
subject, and return to it, as the whim took them, the more 
abrupt the brisker ; taking abruptness for a sort of sub¬ 
limity, and to be aimed at, and to go out of the way for. 
But Pindar was not abrupt, nor did he permit himself a 
transition which the meanest capacity in his audience 
could not follow with ease. Any such jerky, disjointed 
composition of the kind that has been called Pindaric, 
would have shocked assembled Greece, and have shut 
the unlucky poet from all further audience of his country¬ 
men. 

Dr. Johnson, in censuring certain trivial lines in 
Cowley, is surprised “ that a man of the first rank in 
learning and wit could in writing them imagine that he 
imitated Pindar.” It was, however, neither learning nor 
wit that could have preserved Cowley from an error, which 
he shared in common with the learned and the sprightly, 
viz., that among the characteristics of Pindar was abrupt 
transition, and inconsecutive treatment. Dr. Johnson was 
himself under the impression, as where he says that Cowley, 
as “ The imitator, ought to have adopted what he found, 
and to have added what was wanting ; to have preserved 
a constant return of the same numbers, and to have 
supplied smoothness of transition , and continuity of 
thought .” 

Pindar, however, had to deal with a trite subject, and 
had no fear of not being understood, but very great fear of 
being tedious. So he sweeps from peak to peak, over the 
summits of his subject, with eagle-flight, before the admir¬ 
ing gaze of a clear-visioned audience. Pindar, no more 
than any other ancient poet, epic or dramatic, would have 
ventured a step in advance of the quick apprehension of 


150 Knowledge not Privilege . 

his audience. The orator’s necessity of carrying his 
hearers with him, so that they understand what he utters 
as he is speaking, without an instant’s need of pause to 
reflect, lay on all poets that addressed an assembly. 
Pindar was not likely to have ventured on an abruptness 
that endangered the ready reception of his song. The 
stepping-stones that cross its strong flood, may be too 
wide apart for our unfamiliar footing, but not for his 
countrymen and contemporaries, born to the manner, and 
with the subject-matter bodily before them. For them 
there was nothing abrupt in his transition from one topic 
to another, nor anything arbitrary in the topics themselves. 
Ancestry and religion interested the Greeks with a national 
interest. The occasion that drew them together threw a 
halo round all connected with it, so that the poem found 
an audience, rare in these days, yearning to hear, and 
qualified to understand it. No subtlety, no conceits, but 
everything broad, open, and free. 


XVIII. 

KNOWLEDGE NOT PRIVILEGE. 

NOWLEDGE is not privilege; and would, 
indeed, that final decree were once for all pro¬ 
nounced by competent court between them— 
that competent court, the common-sense of 
mankind; for no good will come, or much short of what 
should be, till this temper prevail upon the matter, that a 
man be no more proud of knowing much, be it mastery of 
language, of science, of art, or what not, than of being in 
good health, and no more boast of it than that he hath no 
touch of asthma. 





Knowledge not Privilege. 151 

Among the small things of this earth is the man who 
is proud of his knowledge. He is a standing testimony 
against himself of perversion of the good thing—sheer 
intellectual Beau-Brummelism, pride in what was given us 
to clothe our nakedness. It is unconscious self-disparage¬ 
ment at bottom; for it makes the clothing the better part 
of us, a folly that is none the less for being applied to our 
soul-garments, which, like our bodily, are outside us, and 
for their set and use, whether they serve and adorn a man, 
or be of little use, and make him a scarecrow, depend 
on the wearer, who, in this case, is pretty much his own 
tailor. And any way, pride in the matter is very mis¬ 
placed. 

On the other hand, however, let not your no-knowledge 
men think too complacently of themselves from light com¬ 
parison with those that know, and fancy that, because a 
little contact with the elements of knowledge has cost them 
less trouble than they anticipated, it had been a small 
matter, or one of quite easy achievement for themselves, to 
have attained the higher standing had they been so minded. 
This, like all false notions, is mischievous, but chiefly to 
the owner, who may much mistake himself, which is bad 
for anybody. Before taking up with the notion finally, he 
would do well to consider this, that knowledge, like other 
things, not always puts its hard face in front. Some know¬ 
ledge is hard at the outset, some in the prosecution. Of 
nine-tenths of the difficult acquirements the difficulty lies 
in the aggregate of things separately easy; and you may 
very well do one or two of the things with a facility that 
would be very deceitful promise of your success with the 
whole ; as a man may walk a mile and be unequal to walking 
forty miles. By such arithmetic the fond parent who talks 
of the dear boy’s marvellous genius, but that he wants ap¬ 
plication, might solve the matter more wholesomely for 
young Hopeful’s future prospects, and consider if the boy’s 


152 


On Punning. 

case be not the (me-mile power, and not the forty ? Lack of 
application is at bottom lack of power; in most cases an 
inclination bred of nature, which says, “ do not work me 
hard, I can’t stand it.” Will and power go together 
oftener than is supposed, and the practical value to the in¬ 
dividual of early recognizing want of will to be want of 
power, is that his case may admit of cure by irksome but 
bracino' exercise, which he will never submit to if he think 
himself already strong. 


XIX. 

ON PUNNING. 

UNNING, as a habit, is a nuisance to others, 
and a mischief to the punster. And yet, if 
there be quality, it is the abuse of a good thing, 
which requires to be pruned, and not pulled up 
by the roots. In a good punster there is, after all, stuff to 
make twenty of the lean solemnity that cries “ Oh!” at a 
perpetration, and quotes Johnson’s mot for the matter, and 
who is as remote from wit himself as can be. 

If the punster on such notable occasion, should feel 
depressed in his vocation—but what punster, in what com¬ 
pany, ever was ?—let him be comforted ; he hath a higher 
than Johnson on his side, even the immortal Will, who 
punned more puns in those glorious plays of his, than was 
ever done in the same compass, perhaps, out of Spain. 
Yet this encouraging example, while it exalts the punster’s 
office, limits its exercise wonderfully, if allowed as an 
example; for his puns were telling, and told on telling 
occasions. It was ever the shot in the “ bull’s eye ” with 
him ; and that when the target was up already, not put so 







153 


On Punning. 

for the occasion. And there lies the pinch of the matter. 
A our puns should he good, and not be interruption to any 
thing better; a bright something pitched in the stream, 
and will float withal. But of worse matter it may be good 
interruption, if done without the oversetting of courtesy. 
As, for instance, if there be some Goliath of talk, great in 
Gath and elsewhere, who is holding forth with authority 
and power, but with that peculiar effect upon the company 
that they are in some peril of tetanus, from suppressed 
yawn, I say that the little David that shall come forth 
with five smooth stones from the brook of his imagination, 
and plant me one of them right in the forehead of the 
Philistine, and bring him down amidst the guffaws of the 
beholders, will have wrought a deliverance in Israel. Only 
little David should bethink him that this Goliath is but 
stunned, and will revive to be his enemy for life. And the 
rest may very likely wish him no good for compromising 
them in the presence of the great man. But the sayer of 
good things must lay his account with this— 

“ For so it is, and more the pity, 

Be wise is bad, far worse be witty.” 

Sad, however, as is often the lot of the wise, it may save 
him from the worser lot of the witty. And, truly, there be 
many wise that run little risk in that quarter; for, though 
in wit there be much wisdom, there is much wisdom in which 
there is no wit. But the true wisdom of wit lieth in not 
scattering it indiscriminately ; and the punster who hath 
wisdom and wit—and, with deference to the great Samuel, 
both may point a pun—will show his puns are not puny by 
never punily punning, like the writer at this moment, but 
take him for warning, not example, and reserve his small- 
arms practice for fit occasion. Of such fitness the punster 
himself, unhappily, must be the only judge, but let him lean 
to the side of retention, and against his bias, which may 
be always reckoned on for not letting the faculty rust. 


154 


On Punning. 

There is one use of this faculty which may he worth his 
attention, if he be fond of character. For gauging your 
men in a mixed company, to get at their culture, and that 
sort of thing, there is nothing like a shower of puns, bad 
and good, that shall have some range. The Samuel 
Johnson-man, who, did he but know it, is often a Sammy 
hut not a Johnson, will at once plant himself in that great 
man’s chair, and whether he inflict the pick-pocket novelty 
or not, will be sure to cry “ Oh ! shocking ! ” and in 
earnest, and that, mark you, whether the pun be the 
flattest thing that ever fell even from your mouth, or brisk 
and sparkling as Sidney Smith’s. 

Another will laugh, or be silent, as it takes him; if 
silent, it argues nothing, hut, if he laugh, it shows a genial 
nature, so far; for laughter on occasion testifies something. 
And, if the word-play turn upon such matter, it may test 
his culture, reading, or what not, ay, better than elaborate 
examination on those heads; for, even as isolated passages 
try your knowledge of Greek, so casual allusion tries your 
familiarity with the subject-matter. I commend this me¬ 
thod, therefore, to the consideration of the Civil Service 
examiners, whether a good punning bout with the candidates 
would not test their efficiency somewhat. A good spell at it 
would elicit something unless there be any special objection 
“ to spell.” But this by the way,and there is one caution to 
he observed as to casual allusion eliciting what is in a man. 
If he take the allusion you may infer knowledge, but not 
the contrary from his not taking it; for many men of great 
depth are not quick at small matters. And in little matters 
as well as great, small inference from large data should 
he your rule. The man that hath inference from every 
instance, is a chatterling, and the reasoning faculty is not 
in him. 

But puns should be improvised. Their worth is in 
their spontaneousness. Anecdotes, indeed, may be bottled, 


155 


On Punning . 

nay, too often are bottled, decanted, and rebottled, over 
and over, and yet go down, with wry face sometimes, yet 
they go ; but a bottled pun is an abomination, and a fraud 
upon the company. 

In this word-play there must be something agreeable to 
human nature from its prevalence in states of society 
widely different, and ages far apart. Why Dr. Johnson 
disliked it is not told, that I am aware, but good reason 
may be suggested for his dislike. Nothing is more 
damaging to the ex cathedra style, and when a man 
is riding high horse on his hobby, than a pun that shall 
tickle gravity in its tenderest part, and clean out of its 
dignity. The Doctor’s dictum as to punning, and picking 
pockets, is significant of his feeling on the subject. The 
punster whips a valuable out of your possession, viz., the 
attention of the company, and is out of reach of your 
club, which flourish about as you will, touches him not 
and may make you ridiculous. A pun would give no 
prise to the knock-me-down method of Johnson. Con¬ 
futation, where nothing is asserted, would puzzle a senior 
wrangler, and there is no crushing laughter with an 
argument. Johnson’s prime objection to punning was, 
probably, its diverting the channel of talk. His wrath 
thereat was like that of the burly man of meal at any one 
diverting the stream that turned his mill. 


156 


xx. 

BLANK YEESE AND LITEEAL TEANSLATION. 

HE harmonies of unrhymed decasyllabic metre, 
at least in our language, require more length 
for their development than rhyme; not that 
rhyme cannot embrace the same compass, far 
from it, but that it can dispense with it, and, in the spark¬ 
ling couplet of Pope, does dispense with it. The rhythmic 
relations of a passage in blank verse extend over many 
lines, as we find it in Milton, and every line must distinctly 
contribute to the harmony of the whole, and not terminate in 
itself; nay, must often be content to have no marked cha¬ 
racter of its own, but serve as a stone in the building-up 
of the entire passage. 

This difference between blank verse and the ordinary 
couplet will be apparent in any page of Milton or Pope, in 
the respective metres ; and the difference will be likely to 
come out particularly strong in the reading of most persons, 
especially those who tell you they do not like blank verse, 
and are used to Pope. Such a one may read you the latter 
in a way to please you both, but put him to any, the most 
orchestral passages of Paradise Lost, and a change comes ; 
he will read you every line as he reads the couplet, and 
come down with a thump at the end of the first line, and 
with a thump at the end of the second, and feel his ear 
baulked and disappointed at their not rhyming, and so 
drive heavily through, stopping so often to take up instead 
of driving on to the end of the stage. 

Now a bad reader would read good blank verse into the 
bad blank verse that a literal translator would be likely 






On Music in Education . 


157 


to start with making, viz. lines which are unconnected 
by rhythmic relation. The exigencies of literal trans¬ 
lation forbid the rhythmic grouping of lines to the extent 
required by this kind of verse; and without it the music 
disappears, and a flatness creeps over it, which will not have 
the build of even good prose. For, in this respect, worthy 
Monsieur Jourdain would not have been so much out, as 
the alternative is not between prose and verse. Rhythmi¬ 
cally considered there may he that which is neither; each 
has a rhythm of its own, so that breaking up verse will not 
constitute prose, any more than counting off prose into 
syllables will constitute verse. Each will have to be taken 
to pieces, and put together again on a different principle, to 
constitute the other. 


XXI. 

ON MUSIC IN EDUCATION. 

F music be taught at all let it be thoroughly 
from the outset, as they would teach a profes¬ 
sional ; it is not longer about, and will vex the 
soul of the pupil much less. He or she will be 
able to do all that is done the other way in half the time; 
and, if a girl, retain it, and transmit it to her children, and 
brighten her husband’s home with moderate and graceful 
exercise of this accomplishment. Yes, and this in a way 
that shall be of worth for its own sake, and not owe too 
much to their mutual fondness, and recollection of earlier 
days, when dear Harry was in extasies with that piece, or 
that song, at which so played or sung he would have yawned 
horribly from any but his Caroline. 

I said if taught at all; for, as a general accomplishment, 





158 


On Music in Education. 


I have strong doubts about it—doubts which a parent 
should solve for himself before committing his child to the 
consequences. Among my objections is its absorbing 
effect, which runs over the man’s life, and is not limited, 
as a knack for poetry is, by the skill of the performer. If 
a boy take to writing indifferent verse, at least he has no 
opportunity of inflicting it on his friends, who, if he attempt 
it, will deliver themselves on the sauve quijpeut principle, 
and soon reduce him to letting them off that; he will soon 
sicken of writing what none will listen to, and of printing, 
if he go that length, what none will buy. But if he play 
on some instrument, though but indifferently, or sing, 
although so poorly that none would care to hear him, yet he 
may exercise, ay, and will be courted to exercise, those in¬ 
different accomplishments every week of his life in musical 
society of friends, all meeting together in that spirit of 
mutual forbearance which puts up with the short-comings of 
others in a performance where each fancies himself to be 
doing the thing in superior style. For I have observed that 
any singing, provided it be not absolutely out of tune, will 
do for this matter; and people, on the strength of it, meet 
periodically as punctually as if they were paid for it. Its 
charm cannot be the music itself, for I have known some 
of them, as auditors, quickly weary of much finer perform¬ 
ance, and am therefore inclined to refer their enthusiastic 
devotion at their own meetings to the pleasure of taking 
a part in them. The quorum magna pars fui is a prin¬ 
ciple of great prevalence; a man looks complacently on a 
flower of his own raising, when he might get a bunch of 
them for a penny. So it is the tendency of a little taste 
for drawing to eye with partiality a head of one’s own 
sketching, or a landscape that hath the ego stamp upon it, 
yea, with a warmth that goes nigh to tread on the heels of 
the honest feeling with which we look on a Raphael or 
a Claude, but, of course, with a feeling of another kind, 


On Music in Education . 159 

and in tlie absence of the better tiling with which to com¬ 
pare it. 

In these musical parties, though meeting but at stated 
times, there is the desire, in the interval, to be ready for 
them, and play one’s part well, which entails practising, 
either alone or a few together; so that, on the whole, the 
effect is pretty much this, that all their leisure is taken up 
in it. Is this desirable for those who are capable of any 
thing higher ? Let us not misunderstand—music is a high 
thing; and a Handel, a Mozart, and a Beethoven have 
reached a pitch in their exercise of God’s gift, that may 
line and level with a Homer, a Dante, and a Shakespeare; 
and it is a well-crowned life-work, so far, to have done 
what they have done ; but it may be an ill spending of life 
to devote it, or the leisure for improving it, to the indifferent 
representation of what they have done. Our relation to 
them in so doing were no higher than that of a poor player 
to Shakespeare, and without the excuse of its being for a 
livelihood. I am not criticizing, far from it, the propriety 
of this thing for adults, in the intervals of serious occupa¬ 
tion, in which they have earned the right to spend their 
leisure as their own discretion and experience find best; but 
I do, most seriously and earnestly, and in no carping spirit, 
put in a word for the young, who are on the threshold of 
life, to have it well weighed by those who have influence 
with them how far he or she should be committed to a 
course which will gradually, but infallibly, shut out every 
other avenue of self-improvement by weaning them of the 
inclination to enter it. 

The tendency of this is not always even to cultivate the 
best taste for the thing itself, but rather to narrow one’s 
estimate of the art to the particular channel in which our 
groove runs. This may be observed in artists. A catholic 
taste for painting is, perhaps, no where more rare than 
among them, the tendency being to break up into prefer- 


160 


Body and Soul. 

ences for particular styles. In all matters this tendency is 
strong, but it is intensified in the person who is himself a 
doer in the art or science; for he can hardly help being 
drawn into undue preference of his own sphere. 


XXII. 

BODY AND SOUL. 

■ IIEN death comes, what if this indestructible 
soul, on leaving the body, he companioned by 
an indestructible floating germ of the latter, 
that disengages itself, at the same time, from 
the lifeless mass of muscle and bone, of which it is the 
essential and vital principle, and seed-atom ? Then toge¬ 
ther the twain journey, whither it is their Creator’s will 
they should, free as the thistle-down on this earth of ours, 
that mounts in the air and away, to settle and spring into 
new life remote from the parent plant. For, in a certain 
sense, we are the seed of ourselves, the outshoot of some¬ 
thing that preceded, even in this identity of ours, which 
is but the identity of conscious succession that keeps 
handing down the early part of ourselves to the latter, 
and thus giving us a sense of being the same. 

The change were no greater, to another state of body 
and soul in another world, than the actual changes that 
body and soul undergo here. Look at the man of fifty, 
and compare him with his portrait as a child of six. 
What changes in the body in the interval!—every particle, 
the philosophers say, having changed once in seven years ; 
and it must be so or we should never have done growing. 
And yet the changes are probably not greater than the 
changes of character, opinions, knowledge, views, and 


161 


Body and Soul. 

feelings, that go to make up the internal man. He is 
alter et idem, another and the same, and only knows him¬ 
self to be the same by the gentleman-usher, conscious 
Memory, that is continually introducing the fresh part of 
himself to the former, through all his changes. It will 
probably be the same at the last change on this side the 
grave. Consciousness on the other side will connect us 
by memory with this, whatever the changes, and there 
may be many, between this and our idtimate state of 
happiness. 

The first change will be a casting off, not the body, for 
the germ of it will go with us, but the mass of bone and 
muscle, that is no more necessary for us after death than that 
same identical bone and muscle were necessary in childhood. 
That identical mass will be as consistently cast off at the 
grave as it has been grown into during the seven years that 
preceded it. Then we rise with what ? A new body, into 
which the body-germ shall have gloriously expanded, and 
with which the soul will be as intimately bound. But this 
new body will not have the needments of the old, and, 
not requiring the daily renovation that the old did, the 
lusts and vices growing out of them will have dropped in 
the grave with the fleshly garment. And, with this fleshly 
garment, we shall have done, as far as being clad therein, 
but not as regards the memory thereof, which will proba¬ 
bly cling to us, nor as to the experience won under that 
garb, which will go along with us, modifying, mellowing, 
and colouring our future career, however the conscious¬ 
ness of it will, through the ages, wax fainter and fainter, 
as the memory of childhood in the mature man, whose 
character, though past his power of tracing the influence, 
has taken stamp from that childhood. 


M 


162 


XXIII. 

ON FUGITIVE PIECES. 

VOLUME of fugitive pieces has this advan¬ 
tage over a long poem, that the reader may 
take it up, and read here and there, when he 
would be unequal to the sustained reading of 
the latter. The small pieces would, as far as they were 
read, be read in each case as a whole, and the long poem 
rarely reach, from the same class of readers, and of the 
same opportunity, more than piece-meal attention, with 
little regard to the order of the poet’s design ; passages 
would be separated, which were meant to he taken in con¬ 
nection, and parts, perhaps, read in immediate succes¬ 
sion, which the poet had bestowed some pains in keeping 
asunder. 

The advantage in this particular, therefore, is on the 
side of a collection of small poems, but, in another 
respect, such a volume is open to a very besetting peril, 
to avert which will tax the poet's savoir-faire to the 
utmost, and of a kind from which ordinary skill will 
deliver him in a more lengthened composition as regards 
his reader ; the long-poem peril touching chiefly the non¬ 
readers. The thing may be summed in a phrase; the 
long-poem difficulty is to find a reader who will give it 
consecutive perusal; the short-poem peril is to find him in 
the proper vein. Found the reader, the long poem has 
scope for skill in bringing him from the garish light at the 
threshold, by nice gradations, on and on, to the mystic 
and mellow radiance, where chief the poet’s spell hath 
potency. In the short poem it is entrance and exit, no 



On Fugitive Pieces. 163 

sooner in than out; in which, therefore, what it hath of 
glamour had need operate strongly, and at once, for lack 
of space for gradual working. 

This being so, let us go a little to the root of the mat¬ 
ter. “ A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears 
it, never in the tongue of him that makes it.” The prin¬ 
ciple involved in this dictum expresses a necessity that 
underlies all art-work of whatever kind. Its observance, 
conscious or unconscious, is a condition of all success ; 
and were it more present with art-workers, be they sculp¬ 
tors, painters, poets, musicians, or other, many a failure 
might have been averted, many a success still more com¬ 
plete and enduring. The continual besetment that is 
operating, often unconsciously, on the artist’s mind, and 
especially in writing, in antagonism to this principle, is a 
tendency to impose his own specialty on others. And the 
besetment is the more difficult to shake off that it assumes 
to the artist’s mind the specious form of originality. A 
very winning and coaxing way the phantom hath of passing 
herself off for the all-working goddess that is the soul of 
man’s marvel-working. And the phantom comes to work 
so strongly in the end that the thing she calls herself is 
misprised in her presence by the victim of her blandish¬ 
ments ; who, delivered over to her influence, has neither 
eyes nor ears for aught that hath not her, stamp. And 
henceforth he and that other one, the daughter of truth, 
are strangers. Work on he may still, ay, and with 
vigour, under stimulus of the enchantress’s cup, but all 
that he touches will be transmuted by her from what it is 
to what she shall choose it to seem. His art-work shall 
go forth, and be, indeed, unlike other men’s, and so far 
he shall have his reward, and be original to the extent 
of copying none but himself; but, on the other hand, it 
shall have equally little relation to the broad, under¬ 
lying Nature of which we are each but special expres- 


164 


On Fugitive Pieces . 

sions. This is the inevitable Nemesis that besets such 
choice. 

The accepted expression for this phase of art-work is 
subjectivity, a term borrowed by the Germans from the 
scholastic philosophy. The error of subjectivity, however, 
to my mind, lies in the excess of the quality, where it 
reaches a predominance that, like Aaron’s rod, it swallows 
up every other. Like other qualities and tendencies, it 
requires pruning, not excision. To attempt the latter 
were, in substance, aiming at a species of self-annihila¬ 
tion, of which there is only this cheerful thing to be said, 
that it is happily impossible. Never was art-work entirely 
discharged of the artist’s subjectivity. Shakespeare and 
Homer, that show the least of it, so little that their works 
almost seem as if they were self-produced, for any patent 
indication of the manner of man that produced them, do yet 
give, negatively, undoubted glimpses of themselves. And, 
although they never step out from the radiant cloud of 
their works, never seemingly trace signs of themselves in 
the pictures of life and nature that they present us; yet, 
in their very dealing with the objects that must have 
formed their environment, something of choice transpires, 
which reveals something to the nice observer; even as 
Achilles, among the virgins at the court of Lycomedes, 
was discovered by his taking to the weapons from among 
the women’s gear spread before them from the pedlar’s 
pack by Ulysses. A large humanity, mellowed by a sweet 
melancholy, begotten or shapen by a marvellous world- 
contact, seems to breathe through those divine dramas, dif¬ 
fering, on one hand, from the narrow, but intense nature, and 
strong gloom that must have dictated the Commedia, and, 
on the other, from the large, but sunny and cheerful ex¬ 
ternal-world-enjoying spirit, that created the Iliad, and had 
softened down by saddening experience in the Odyssey. 

Something, therefore, of subjectivity is inseparable 


On Fugitive Pieces . 165 

from all art-work. It is the excess that is harmful, and 
it operates in alienating the sympathy of the reader, 
beholder, or other, to whom the art-work, be it statue, 
book, or picture, is addressed. The prime aim of the 
artist is to appeal to the sympathy by all legitimate means. 
That sympathy he must obtain, and it must form part 
of the effect he has to produce. Without it he is ob¬ 
viously in the position of painting for the blind, or 
lavishing sweet strains on the deaf. To make people 
hear and see you must get them to listen and look. To 
do this the artist’s work must have something in common 
with that which is in that other’s mind at the time. If 
there be any thing wanting in that mind to put it in the 
requisite relation, it is the artist’s business to supply it. 
In considering the possibility of that something being 
wanting in those he addresses by his work, and what that 
something may be, and how to supply it, and whether it 
can be supplied at all, the artist will often have to use 
much thought, and encounter much perplexity—a per¬ 
plexity from which he cannot escape, as it will materially 
influence both his choice of a subject and the mode of 
handling it. 

All art-work, and especially writing, would be much 
easier if the mere presentment of the artist’s idea, as it 
springs from the brain, would in all cases suffice for its 
immediate, I will not say acceptance but recognition for 
what it is, and what belongs to it, in a word, that justice 
should be done to it. But it is not so. Except with ideas 
in common circulation, and therefore less needing to be 
individually expressed, the stronger the thinker, and the 
closer his observation, the less likety is what he propounds 
to he readily received, unless indeed it be tricked out with 
taking phraseology, which as with any other stranger, gets 
it admission for its fine clothes, where in a plain suit it 
would have been flouted or regarded with suspicion. And 


166 On Fugitive Pieces. 

no wonder, for there is all the difference in the w r orld 
between an idea in the author’s mind, where it has grown 
up, it may be for long, it may he recently, but in either 
case, infant or mature, still among kindred and cognate 
speculations, the result of habitual brooding, and possibly 
the expression of a life’s thought and experience—great 
difference between the same idea in such company, and 
when sent out naked and alone to settle in another mind, 
among alien ideas, that, so to speak, are nothing akin to 
it, for they are of another tribe, grown up with other 
associations, and speaking another tongue, and with them 
therefore, it cannot communicate, nor fairly give account of 
itself, or state what it is, and what are its aims, and how it 
may ultimately square with the relations of the strange 
society it has intruded on. There is no prosperous course 
for it there. It will have to return whence it came, and 
not repeat the voyage without a knowledge of the language, 
and letters of introduction from those who have relations in 
both countries. These it is the artist’s business to provide, 
and, if of the right stamp, he will glorify his art in the 
provision, and turn a necessity into an ennobling privilege. 
Yea, do it with such affluence, and prosperous effect, that 
he shall seem to colonize that other mind, there will be 
such moving to and fro of ideas in that glorious soul- 
commerce, which is established between a great worker and 
his appreciators. But this, for the reasons before stated, is 
easier achieved in a long work, that deals in originality, 
than in a collection of short pieces, equally original, that 
do not throw light on one another, and are too short to 
allow of preparing the mind for what requires preparation. 

A proper consideration of the difference between oral 
and written communication will result in finding that what 

O 

has been just said lies at the root of it; that the difficulty 
of reaching the mind of the hearer is the only real distinc¬ 
tion between them, and governs the requirements of each. 


167 


On Fugitive Pieces . 

That difference lies roundly in this, that, while repetition 
in either case is ungraceful, and therefore to be avoided, 
the written communication can be read again, if a first 
perusal fail of conveying the meaning, but the spoken must 
be understood, if at all, when it is spoken. While, there¬ 
fore, all communication should aim at conveying its mean¬ 
ing at once, to the oral it is indispensable. The writer 
should be lucid ; the orator must be so, and his meaning 
flash with decision from his expression, as his tongue is 
uttering it, or he will outstrip his audience, the most un¬ 
lucky piece of progress he can make. 

To guard against this danger a certain amplificative 
style is sometimes recommended, in which it is considered 
that the orator may say the same thing over again in a 
graceful way. This, however, I take to be at best but a 
round-about method of dealing with the matter, and will 
result in very second-rate oratory, such as that which is 
measured by the length of time a man can keep on his legs, 
and talk without stoppage or stammer, and it may reach 
the praise of fluency, but will fall far short of the real 
tiling. Studied and ornate declamation may borrow much 
from this method, and repay the debt in its own mellifluous 
way, to the great delectation of the hearers, who will 
criticize and enjoy; but not that higher oratory, that 
moves by its own force, and with apparent unconsciousness, 
straight to the hearer’s convictions, which it seems but to 
mirror, and intensify, while it stirs them to the depths of 
their nature, finding not a critic or an admirer among 
them, but a whole assembly, who rise as one man, and ex¬ 
claim “ Let us do as you say,” “ Lead us against Philip.” 

This, the highest sort of oratory, and sole deserving the 
name, disdains such iteration and word-piling. Ear from 
being lavish of words its economy of them is remarkable. 
How then does it reach conviction ? How is it that it 
never stumbles on dulness of apprehension in the audience ? 


168 On Fugitive Pieces. 

Because it takes the directest method of obviating mistake 
by clear and unmistakeable utterance. The lightning at a 
flash reveals itself, and requires no second stroke for that 
purpose. It is so with oratory, and indeed with all utter¬ 
ance. The fault is oftener with itself than the object aimed 
at if it fail. It flashes unperceived because it is not 
lightning, but a glimmer, that iteration may lamely help. 
The lightning requires neither to he detained nor repeated 
for the eye to perceive it. So the cognate idea flashing on 
the mind makes its presence instantaneously and suffi¬ 
ciently felt. But it must he what the mind’s eye is fitted 
to see, and within its range, or it will pass unheeded what¬ 
ever its value. 

The interconnection of ideas, and not their verbose ex¬ 
pression, it is, that governs the mind’s apprehension of 
them. The true orator appeals to what is in his hearer’s 
mind, by ideas so proximate that recognition flashes out of 
itself, and seems like a discovery of the auditor, or a sudden 
recollection. If the subject-matter presented be very alien 
to the minds of the auditory, the veritable orator, instead 
of verbose, and amplified, and iterated expression of the 
idea, whose reception he is aiming at, briefly presents some 
intermediate idea, or, it may be, several ideas, one, two, or 
three or more in succession, that will connect what he 
would convey with what he knows to be in the hearers’ 
minds, and then the communication is established, as with 
stepping-stones, across the stream of thought that seemed 
at first to keep them apart. A good understanding springs 
up between them, and grows as he advances, till audience 
and orator seem but as one gigantic rational being of 
whom he is the inspired mouthpiece. 


169 


XXIY. 

ON READING AND STUDl r . 

EADING is excellent for mental culture, but it 
must be with measure, and its success depends 
on it. It is mental food, and subject to like 
law with the bodily, as to quality and quantity. 
Ill food is bad every way. And short commons and over¬ 
feeding are neither of them good, but over-feeding 
is the worst of the two. The one meal a day may not 
be enough, but it will yield a better growth than a daily 
six meals’ diet. How much a man may eat, how much he 
may read, cannot be answered absolutely, as it depends on 
his digestion; but he may be sure he has exceeded if his 
activity in either kind, mental or physical, be abridged. 
A plethora of mind is worse than a plethora of body, from 
the greater danger of the patient growing proud of his 
malady. It is a sad spectacle to see a mind panting and 
wheezing under a load of ill-digested learning. Not that 
this is a very common disease in these days, but stages of 
the malady will always be a besetment with the eager 
student; and, as any degree of it puts the mind from its 
proper action of thinking at the early period when it is 
freshest for the exercise, the caution is needed as much as 
ever it was in the days of huge folios, freighted with the 
produce of every man’s mind but the author’s. Fashion 
in these days, fastidiousness, and a certain current dis¬ 
paragement of other men’s labours, may relieve us from 
the load of learning, but the torpor, at least the inaptitude 
for original thought, may well remain in as aggravated a 
form ; the multiplicity of objects to which the mind is 
drawn operating as effectually to paralyze vigorous tendency 
in any direction. 





170 


On Reading and Study. 

The earnest student of this day is as open to a Sisyphus- 
like liability of being oppressed by the recoil of his own 
studies, as any of the middle-age worthies, although his 
case will take colour from our times. How should he read? 
Little and with choice. His mental furniture will oftener 
ask arranging than enlarging; books of the right kind, 
well read, will be helpful here; he must possess all the 
ground he covers; scouring the country, and away, will only 
answer exceptionally. Multum est legendum, non multa, 
much reading but not of many books, is a wise saw; and 
it is a good counsel that urges the student to get all he can 
out of a book; and it is still better, if supplemented with 
this, to get no more out of it than it contains; for this last 
is no uncommon besetment, and requiring some discipline 
to avoid. Of readers there are not too many who will 
allow a book to make its own impression on them un¬ 
coloured. 

And here I would observe that the value of a good author 
is not limited to his accuracy; his very mistakes are often 
instructive ; truth, or a bright fragment of it, will be found 
in his most mistaken reasoning, which, in fact, is often hut 
the wrong application of right principles. The student 
has only to reject the application, and appropriate the rest. 
Such discriminate dealing with what presents itself, to 
know not only in the rough that it is right or wrong, but 
in what manner right, and to what degree wrong, is of the 
very essence of all self-improvement. 

Occasion for such discriminate handling is afforded by 
a passage in Burke, one of the most profound as well as 
eloquent of political writers, but whose equanimity was a 
little too disturbed at the fierce pace of the French Revo¬ 
lution. He says, “ that a politician to do great things 
looks for a power, what our workmen call a purchase ; and 
if he finds that power in politics as in mechanics he cannot 
be at a loss to apply it.” This points to a right principle, 


171 


On Reading and Study. 

viz. that which preserves what it can and applies it to the 
best use ; but the author was wrong in giving “ Monastic 
Institutions” as an example of a power that it behoved a 
statesman to preserve and w T ork. Whatever may have been 
their merit at their first introduction, and few institutions 
but started with some stock of merit, any reflecting man, 
thinking calmly of the matter, must feel that the time for 
any thing like wholesome action in them has long passed 
away. As a refuge from violence, when the central society 
was weak, and inadequate to the protection of its members, 
they may have done some service, but could not now; for, 
before the tide of violent action in the communities of the 
present day, they would be swept off; and their power of 
resistance is accordingly limited to being an obstacle and 
obstruction to its mild and legitimate cause of social pro¬ 
gress. Monasteries and nunneries, or any other institutions 
that enforce life-long celibacy on their members, require 
more than average qualification in them, when all society 
is compelled to make up with the average. Vows taken 
in ignorance, or as a refuge from calamity, exert a life-long 
pressure to their breach, when the ignorance or calamity 
hath passed away. The vow is lasting, but the ignorance 
may at any moment be enlightened, and the sense of calamity, 
after the first blow, is continually softening away, and, in 
either case, there ensues a conflict at the close that, for 
man or woman, cannot in one case in a hundred, be good 
for this world or the next. 

But, to return to our subject, in study, as in all things, 
observe mode and measure; and as every good workman 
is careful of his tools, you cannot set too great a value on 
yours, which are your eyes ; see that you do not overwork 
them, as they are your only pair in this life. If you have 
the choice let your reading be by day-light, or in the 
evening by a light that comes the nearest to it; avoid gas 
if possible, a pair of candles is far before it and comes the 


172 On Reading and Studg. 

nearest to daylight by having less glare concentrated in one 
place ; which you may test by looking off your book at the 
candles, and noting how much more pleasantly you can 
look at them than at the gaslight. Gas close to you is as 
glaring as sunlight, and removed to an agreeable distance 
is insufficient to read by; in this matter try for yourself, 
and do not accept the testimony of those who are in the 
habit of doing everything by gaslight, and like it; the eye 
may get accustomed to any thing, though at the ultimate 
expense of the organ itself. One disadvantage in the use 
of gas is the facility of increasing the light as your eyes 
grow jaded and require more ; it is but a turn of the screw 
and you can continue your task, when it had been wiser to 
take Nature’s hint and leave off. Your tale of work at 
the year’s end would not be less and your prospect of a 
life-long use of your eyes very much greater. It may be 
questioned if any healthy person’s eyes fail them if they 
have not been overworked at some time. 

Read always good print in books that you read con¬ 
stantly, not necessarily very large print, for too large print 
will incapacitate you for small, but let it be as clear as you 
can get it. In all your reading, however, remember there 
is one book, the best printed possible, which, if not always 
the easiest to read, will not fatigue your eyes in the attempt, 
viz. the Book of Human Nature, with the pages lying 
open in the men and women you meet with, and who will 
furnish you more food for wholesome thought, and real 
wisdom, by what they bring and what they suggest, than 
the mere library alone will afford you. If you fail of find¬ 
ing profit in this the fault is with yourself, and the sooner 
you learn to read the books that eat, drink, move, and live, 
and sit round tables, the better you will profit by the books 
that squat on your shelves. Men and motives in all ages 
are the same, and differ but in the manifestation ; large 
matters among them being conducted upon principles near 


173 


On Reading and Study. 

akin to tlie small ones; their modes of action, like fashion 
in dress, may change as you will, but the people are the 
same. 

To the profiting hy this source of improvement there is 
a helpful reticence, of easy definition, and, to a balanced 
mind, of easy observance, viz. never to repeat out of a 
company what you have heard in it that would, in never so 
small a degree, operate injuriously to any. This may 
abridge you of many a clever speech, and racy anecdote, 
but, if you are of the right stamp, you will not greatly 
prize wit that must give pain to preserve its point. Wit, 
at full flood, is good-humoured, and it is when it runs low 
that ill-nature is seen in the mud and slime at the bottom. 
On this score, therefore, I cannot commend the repartee of 
a cabinet minister of former times, who, on a visit in the 
country, dined at the squire’s of the place after the service 
on Sunday. The clergyman who had preached sat next 
him at dinner, and, in his simplicity, was anxious to get an 
opinion from the great man on his sermon, on which he 
had bestowed some pains. Failing to elicit any thing he 
said at length, addressing the statesman, “ I think I was 
brief this morning.” “ You were,” was the answer. “ And, 
I trust, not tedious,” pursued the preacher. “ Nay, pardon 
me,” replied the other, “ but you were tedious.” 

The repartee were successful in making the rest of the 
company very merry, and quenching the curate, hut the 
success strikes me as below the person who achieved it. It 
had been becoming in a court jester of the middle ages, 
who held his bauble on the tenure of saying smart but 
spiteful things; but a large and independent nature would 
have been better graced by not condescending to so obvious 
an answer, but saying something with less smartness and 
equal truth, that would have met the case without com¬ 
promising the clergyman before those with whom his life 
lay, and who might keep up the bitter saying to his dis- 


174 


On Reading and Study. 

comfort. Had the clergyman been one whose vote and 
political influence the statesman had been anxious to secure 
would he have made that answer ? 

Anecdotes and speeches of this kind are lively in circu¬ 
lation, but better graced in the neglect, unless denuded of 
half their charm, circumstance of time, place, and person. 
Your views in society I suppose to he above the meagre 
satisfaction of repeating the clever ill-nature that you hear 
in it. And, with this temper, you will not only be in better 
posture for observing, for reticence draws confidence, hut 
your judgments will be sounder and more healthy, as their 
soundness will be their sole value to you, who are under no 
temptation to sparkling showy inference, which your prin¬ 
ciples preclude you from parading. 

As your object is honest self-culture, the terms brilliant 
and plodding will not, I take it, very feverishly affect you; 
for, between ourselves, though all plodding reach not the 
brilliant, all permanent brilliancy is bottomed on very stern 
plodding, that hath been vigorously working below the 
surface. The gold we handle bears not the sweat of the 
miner on the face of it, nor the struggles, and trials, and 
anxieties of the finder, and yet it hath been painfully dug 
for, and carefully sought. Aim not then at brilliancy ; for 
it is one of the worst aims you can set yourself. Aim, 
with all your care, at what it rests with yourself to achieve 
—accuracy and precision in all you do. Do your work 
quickly if you can; but let it be done, and with no feverish 
anxiety to reach the rapidity which practice will inevitably 
give without seeking, to the pitch you are capable of, and 
beyond it no anxiety will carry you, though over-anxiety 
may make you stumble and fall short of it. In all things, 
intellectual as well as moral, let esse quam videri be your 
motto. 

What you learn be not content to stow away, as some 
do their books and their pictures, and never, perhaps, 


175 


On Reading and Study . 

look at them again, but do you think upon it often and 
often, and, by making it the object of your contemplation, 
the thought that it is fitted to breed will breed in you. 
That act of mental incubation will hatch a brood, which 
you would not wish to be without; and such process, with 
all your knowledge, will multiply it a hundredfold, yea, 
beyond hope. The difference between knowledge brooded 
on, and that which is carted into the mind, and there 
stowed away out of the owner’s view, is just the difference 
between seed in the seedsman’s shop or sown in the ground. 
Far, therefore, from sitting down content with filling your 
head with isolated truths, try hard to get your thoughts 
to piece together, and they have a natural tendency to it; 
for truth stamps on its fragments a yearning to come to¬ 
gether again—a process which it will be your duty and 
pleasure, as it will certainly be to your profit, to forward in 
your own case. 

It were no ill exercise to take a note-book, which shall 
he one of a series, and put down in it, day by day, every 
idea you have freshly learnt. In the margin put appro¬ 
priate heading, and at the beginning of your book devote 
a few leaves to an index of those headings, for easy refer¬ 
ence and to prevent your putting the same thing twice ; for 
such book-keeping must not be by double entry. It will 
also enable you to correct your entries by fresh informa¬ 
tion. This correction will probably, at first, be pretty 
frequent, and will assuredly not be the least improving 
portion of your task. 

Your first book will hardly satisfy you by the time you 
have concluded it; hut, of all things, destroy it not. It 
is a register of your progress, the starting-point from 
which you have to reckon your course. Of your intellec¬ 
tual life-voyage it is your first log-book, and therefore to 
be accurately kept, and punctually. The very fact of 
keeping such, and the blunders you make in it, will im- 


176 


On Heading and Study. 

prove jour habits of observation. To know bow to observe, 
and to distinguish what you do know into the degrees of 
knowing, is a rare faculty, which- is all the more rare from 
its not being attempted sufficiently early, or not being 
prosecuted; and this usually from discouragement at the 
first attempt. It is a faculty, like many others, which is 
given to us all in various degrees of power; but the 
weakest has enough of it to repay cultivation, and in the 
strongest it is all the stronger for early and constant 
exercise. 

As all self-culture, however, is imperfect, which is with¬ 
out reference to conduct in life, a parting word on practical 
action and its teaching will not be out of place here. Do 
what you can, when you can, as well as you can ; and let 
every act be your teacher in future doing, which it will be 
if properly challenged, not else. If you look on it com¬ 
placently it will smile back upon you complacent and 
empty; but, to earnest asking, your best and most pro¬ 
sperous action will be eloquent of something amiss, some¬ 
thing in your mode of working that is peculiar, not to this 
act, but to all your action; some besetment of your own, 
or something in others that you had not sufficiently taken 
into account. Trace these, the weeds, it may be, that 
just come to the surface of life, or duck under, according 
to the strength of the current; trace them to their roots, 
which are always there firm and flourishing at the bottom. 
A few acts, well analyzed, may yield more experience— 
that golden experience which is so large a part of the 
wisdom of this nether world—than half a life of action 
where everything is left to make what impression it can of 
itself, wholly unchallenged. 

In classifying your conclusions, use caution as for your 
very life; for your life’s guidance, and the lower wisdom, 
that is to rudder it, is indeed as your life. Accept no 
inference but after anxiously weighing the pro and con. It 


177 


Er ror and Self-deception. 

■will not be tedious, but, oil the contrary, if you are fitted 
for the work, it will be amusing as well as profitable— 
quite as amusing as chess, and as great, or greater, exer¬ 
cise of all your powers, with the advantage of the results 
remaining, and not being swept with the pieces from the 
board. 

\ our conclusions, as fast as you make them, may, with 
their objects, be classed under one or other of the fol¬ 
lowing heads :—1st, Unknown — i. e. objects about which 
you have yet come to no opinion either way; 2nd, Doubt¬ 
ful; 3rd, Probable; 4th , Almost certain; which fourth 
head it should be your aim to get as full as you conscien¬ 
tiously can, but be very cautious, however full, of pushing 
the contents on to the fifth head, Certain ; which, with the 
wise, will always be the least tenanted, and, with fools, the 
most. 


XXV. 


ERROR AND SELF-DECEPTION. 

ORALISTS of all ages have lamented the lia¬ 
bility of our race to error—how men rush here, 
rush there, in pursuit of phantoms, blown about 
by the wind of every doctrine. All this is very 
true, but he that has to do with his fellows, or is medita¬ 
ting upon the history of mankind, and would account to 
himself for much that is done, and much that is undone, 
by our erring race, would do well to bear one thing in 
mind, which, if I mistake not, will serve to explain many 
seeming contradictions, viz. that, after all, it is a very hard 
thing to deceive men, but an easy thing, comparatively, to 
help them deceive themselves. In this lies the success 
of imposture; it was previously palatable to the deceived, 






178 Error and Self-deception. 

something they were yearning for, or at least expecting, 
or for which, at least, they had aptitudes, that, at the 
approach of the dear deceit, threw open their conviction, 
and in it entered. 

This will account for great popular errors, and for much 
individual aberration ; for the throngs that have been de¬ 
ceived, from the days of John of Leyden to those of 
Brothers and Johanna Southcote, and for easy victims of 
every variety of delusion, whether of trade-speculation, 
witchcraft, or the isms. Surely nothing short of the eager¬ 
ness to realize their own yearnings could have retained 
the confidence of their followers, after repeated failure, in 
some who have prophesied the world’s end at a fixed time. 
If a man predict a matter in which we are indifferent, as 
what weather it will be this day month, failure will destroy 
his credit; but not so if it be a matter we ardently wish 
for or expect, and the possibility of its happening remains. 
He may colour his failure with any plausibility, and his 
credulous hearers will help him in doing so, and hang their 
faith anew on each fresh prediction of what they are de¬ 
sirous of happening. 

The principle runs through life. Persuasion prospers 
chiefly where our convictions rush out, and see themselves 
in it. It is often a Narcissus-like love of ourselves that 
grounds our docilitv. It is the secret of the courtier who 

o t> 

sways his prince, of the waiting-maid that gets the length 
of her mistress’s foot, and, in fine, of all undue influence, 
that puts the simple in the hands of the subtle, or even 
higher intellects in the hands of the low and ignorant, 
but who are in unsuspected possession of this key to their 
superior’s weakness. It is the secret also of more amiable 
and legitimate influence. It is often unconsciously the 
prosperous element in the lover’s suit, bringing it to a fair 
issue even beyond hope; though, too often, the result be 
not hopeful, as when it brings about a union between two 


179 


Poetry and Common-place. 

persons who ultimately find themselves not so suited as 
they had thought, and one of them wakes to the dreary 
conviction that flattered self-love had too much sway in 
the matter. The aberrations of multitudes and the bewil¬ 
derment of a poor maid have this in common, that the 
delusion prospers less by what it brings than by what it 
finds. 


XXYI. 

POETRY AND COMMON-PLACE. 

OETRY is power; and genius characteristically 
shows itself in doing great things with small 
means, and with ease. Whatever suggests 
apparatus and effort on the poet’s part is, so 
far, detrimental. A poet appears great when he appears 
at home among his great thoughts, even to seeming un¬ 
consciousness that they are great, and half making the 
reader of the same mind, they flash upon his conviction so 
clear and familiar. But if the poet appear struggling 
with a great idea, and wrestling, as it were, coram 
oculis, to fix its expression, the effect is rather painful 
than sublime; and one thing we clearly feel, that 
our teacher hath not mastered his subject, and we 
cannot, therefore, yield our convictions to him on what 
is alien to his own. It is evidently an unexamined bale 
under which he is staggering, and whether its contents be 
of value or worthless he knows not as yet, but pitches it 
down before us to examine for ourselves. ’Tis well if it 
prove worth the pains; for it often happens that there is 
much writhing and contortion in delivering very empty 
packages in this way. Readers in their horror of common¬ 
place, very much paraded now-a-days, put poets who will 






180 Poetry and Common-place. 

pander to it, to much posture-making. With some persons 
everything is common-place of which they have often heard, 
although they have no definite ideas upon the matter. Truths 
presented to persons of this temper, are common-place 
because they have often heard the matter put in problem, 
though on which side the truth lies they have no notion. 
They dismiss the conclusion because the topic is familiar. 
These people are ever longing to he startled, and it is 
hard to startle one who having but heard of a thing, 
thenceforth sets it down, without more, among stale matters. 
The unimproving result for such is this, that, novelty being 
the price of his attention, his temper will turn him from 
each object successively long before he is properly ac¬ 
quainted with it; for knowledge grows but as the novelty 
wears off. 

That, truly, which is thoroughly familiar and known to 
us, should alone be set down as common-place, and so dis¬ 
pense with being handled for itself. There are many 
truths, which, except for grounding other truths, it were 
tedious to be always insisting on. They form, indeed, the 
veritable and choice treasure of the human race, and 
accumulate slowly, hut surely, with the progress of thought. 
But of these, be they few or many, that, as single thoughts, 
have grown so familiar to the conviction of mankind, as to 
be justly called common-place, I question much if the 
sequence of any three be so settled in the minds of ten in a 
hundred, as to deserve that name. The possession of single 
thoughts too rarely leads to knowledge of their connection. 
We float on life’s surface among great truths, and move 
from one to the other, and see not how they he hut peaks 
thrust up above the waters, hut rooting downwards with 
enlarging base, and interjoining below. 


181 


XXVII. 

ON DESCRIPTION IN POETRY. 

ICTURA POESIS is true, but observe one 
broad distinction between it and the plastic 
arts, painting and sculpture. Poetry, and all 
speech, oral or written, can only represent to 
another that, of which he hath the elements in his mind, 
while painting and sculpture represent what they do 
represent, (minus the associations connected with it,) to 
any one who has eyes, whether he has seen the thing 
before or not. A statue or painting of an elephant, or 
boa-constrictor, gives to one who had never seen an 
elephant or a snake, a notion of those animals which no 
words could convey. 

The essential difference between the two, as to external 
objects, lies in this, that word-art appeals to the experience 
of the auditor, and is entirely dependent on it, and prospers 
only in as much as it deals with what he has in him already. 
The most enchanting structure of fairy-like workmanship 
it will raise easily, but the materials must be there. The 
materials that go to the building-up of thoughts and feel¬ 
ings and passion are more commonly there in all minds, 
but it is otherwise with external matter. An American 
Indian, at Penn’s first visit to the country, might have been 
made by words to understand, and enter into, an English 
love-story much better than you could get him to have a 
definite notion of the structure of the building, and of the 
country around it, in which the scene lay. How would 
you have made him understand, by mere words, what a 
gabled roof was, or a house with seven gables,—and that 






182 On Description in Poetry. 

beautiful cluster-chimney,—the fields and hedges, oak, ash, 
and elm, cows and pasture, the village church and the 
cliurch-bells ? 

What is the inference ? This, that in word-art, if you 
have to deal with external matters, you can only do so to 
the extent your audience know about it. You can augment, 
correct, or rearrange their knowledge, but you cannot 
create the knowledge, if they have not the materials already. 
This is important in description, and, were authors more 
governed by this consideration, much description would be 
either omitted or shortened. I say shortened ; for, if the 
materials be not in the reader, omit the description; and 
if they be, then brief characteristic allusion to what he 
knows will recall the idea more vividly than you can by 
elaboration produce it. A stroke, a touch, will set the reader 
creating for himself in the direction that the stroke strikes, 
and his mind will thus, at your instigation, work vividly ; 
and your descriptive art show the highest of all power, that 
of communicating its own quality to what it touches. 

Description of locality, landscape, buildings, and per¬ 
sonal appearance, form, feature, &c., of men and women 
are points on which there is much failure, and much 
success; the success greatest where least is done, and the 
failure where the elaboration and pains deserved a better 
fate. 

Curiously enough the great masters, Homer and Shake¬ 
speare, are not minute in description of place or person. 
You know the characters of Achilles, Agamemnon, Ulysses, 
Diomed, and Nestor ; of Helen and Andromache, Hecuba 
and Penelope ; of Lear and Macbeth and Hamlet, Cordelia 
and the Lady of Glamis, and Ophelia. You could say 
what they would do, and what they would eschew; but set 
fifty painters, that entered fully into their character, to 
separate portraiture of each, and no two portraits would be 
alike, so little is given, in either poet, of the personal form 


On Description in Poetry. 183 

and feature of characters, that live, nevertheless, vividly in 
our minds. 

How is this ? Of the dramatist it might be said that 
he must not be too minute in feature-description, as it 
might clash with the faces of the actors in the piece. 
And they being visible, moreover, have no need to be 
personally described. This indeed were good answer for 
abstaining from description in Shakespeare’s case but not 
in Homer’s. And in no case will it account for the little 
need of description that is felt by a reader of the plays 
or the poems. Nay, further, there are many lovers of 
Shakespeare that prefer not to see their favourite plays 
acted, because of the speciality of the actor that gets thrust 
into the ideality of the dramatist. Shakespeare’s are the 
best reading, as well as the best acting plays extant; the 
farthest possible from plays written to suit a particular 
actor. So much of this double character of a stage and 
closet play is due to the high generalization that abstained 
from fixing personal feature, that I cannot but think it was 
intended on the higher ground. In my opinion, it pro¬ 
ceeded from instinctively feeling that it was useless to at¬ 
tempt what could not be done, and had been valueless if it 
could. For proof of the utter worthlessness of attempting 
to convey complete characteristic notion of a person by 
minute description of form and feature, try this experiment. 
Prince Jerome, and the present prince Napoleon, are said 
to bear strong likeness to the great Napoleon ; though 
Flandrin’s portrait in the International Exhibition gives a 
very marked difference in the mouth. By what words 
will you give a notion of the form and feature of Prince 
Jerome, and Prince Napoleon, and the great Napoleon, 
that shall difference your portrait of the first two from one 
another, and both from the Emperor ? 

That description of external objects depends for success 
on observance of the principle we have been considering, 


184 On Description in Poetry. 

breaks upon us in a thousand ways. “ The elephant 
wreathed his lithe proboscis/’ conveys a clear notion to every 
one who has seen an elephant. And when a naturalist 
speaks of a fly as using its proboscis to extract moisture 
from a lump of sugar, he is intelligible to every one who 
has seen that not uncommon domestic phenomenon. But 
both would be unintelligible to him who had not seen a fly, 
or an elephant, or pictorial presentment of either : and no 
art-work, worth the name, would by elaborate process of 
words, attempt to convey the idea to such. A painting 
would convey it at once. 

Of the limits of the plastic arts it is not within my pro¬ 
vince to speak, and they may be here dismissed with one 
observation, viz., that word-art finds its limits most in 
dealing with external objects, and the plastic arts most in 
conveying ideas that do not enter at the eye, or are not 
suggested by the sight of the object. No painter could 
convey the notion of the use of a bell to him, who had 
never seen or heard of one. 

The pictorial, or representative faculty of word-art being 
so allusive in its character, it will be at its weakest in 
dealing with individualities ; for individuality, in proportion 
as it is so, is likely to be withdrawn from, or escape 
general recognition, and we have seen that general recog¬ 
nition is the field in which alone this faculty successfully 
works, or can work. It should deal, therefore, with class 
objects. With individuality you may deal if it be known ; 
for the improbability of its being known is what makes it 
ineligible for treatment. Thus an eccentric individual 
may be described and talked of among his acquaintances 
very intelligibly, and imitations of his tone and manner 
given, if not very consistently with good breeding and good 
feeling, yet often very tellingly and pointedly. But 
attempt the same thing in another company, total strangers 
to him and his, there, however they may be disposed to 


On Description in Poetry . 185 

tolerate the buffoonery, they will receive it coldly, from 
missing its point. 

Individuality, therefore, labours under the defect of 
lacking ground for recognition. And the great art, when 
individuality is created and brought in, is to produce that 
ground in the reader’s mind, by working the knowledge 
into him in the book itself. This is characterization, which 
is always at its highest when combining most of the general 
class qualities, of which it is itself an individualization. 

But, to return to our more immediate subject, in descrip¬ 
tion it were well to consider that there is all the difference 
in the world between discovering beauties and inventing 
them. The discovery of hidden beauties that reveal them¬ 
selves to the skilled and attentive observer, but escape the 
careless and unskilled, is a fertile source of good writing, 
provided they be of a cast that are recognized when pro¬ 
duced ; for that which breeds contention, whether it be a 
beauty or no, is scarcely worth contending for. What is 
pointed out for the reader’s admiration should intrinsi¬ 
cally be of a kind that will interest him in itself, and not 
simply for the manner of putting it, and the style of the 
writing. There is a dreary hollowness at the bottom of 
all writing that tends to put a special face upon any thing 
instead of that which really belongs to it. The interest of 
a thing, to which interest legitimately attaches, lies, not in 
depicting it other than it is, but in tracing its relations, 
and making the mind contemplate attentively, and see in 
it what had before escaped notice, but which was there all 
the time, and not foisted on it by literary art, or fine 
writing, as it is called. Between the two methods there is 
just the difference of painting deal to look like marble, or 
fetching up, by adequate polish, the beautiful veining of the 
stone itself. Affectation, in all its brandies, clings to the 
one method, and will ultimately poison and corrupt the 
writer’s talent who employs it; and progress, in this road, 


186 


On Description in Poetry. 

there is none, hut increasing sameness; for it is no tran¬ 
script from the infinite variety of Nature, hut the selfsame 
coat of motley which the writer casts upon everything, and 
through which it is impossible to see it as it is. 

It may not he inappropriate here to say a word or two 
on the relation of poetry and external nature, especially 
landscape, as regards the ancients and ourselves. The 
poetry of a people should be in harmony with the people. 
The poetry of the Greeks was pre-eminently so from the 
earliest dawn through their best times until they began to 
imitate themselves. The English poetry, in its early days, 
was pretty much so, less the allegories that rose, perhaps, 
out of the Mysteries. Our greatest poets have always 
been in harmony with our people; hut, in later times, 
much of our poetry, and especially the descriptive, is 
not so, and mainly from the writers indulging in senti¬ 
ment, with which the crowd have no sympathy, and 
which they themselves, at bottom, do not feel. Ancient 
poetry, in that respect, is more uniformly true, and modern 
poetry often exceedingly false in its fine impassioned 
moods. 

The ancient Greeks did not much indulge in landscape- 
poetry, partly from their greater bent for human interests 
to which it was mere back-ground, and partly, I think, 
for another reason which has not, that I know of, been 
adverted to, viz. that, peopling the woods, and all inani¬ 
mate nature, with appropriate divinities, they shrank from 
too familiar discussion of what to them were subjects of 
awe. The epithets in Homer, which are applied to na¬ 
tural objects in the abstract, have this tone, and always 
imply a something akin to dread. And it is somewhat con¬ 
firmatory of this view that Theocritus, who lived at a 
time when the Greeks had thrown off much of the simple 
belief of the early ages, seems most at home and free in 
his account of external nature. To sum the difference 


187 


On Description in Poetry. 

between the Greek poetry and the English, ay, from 
Shakespeare’s time, I should say that all Greek poetry 
was to the taste of all Greeks generally, from the prince 
to the peasant, and that much of English poetry is not 
only distasteful, but absolutely unintelligible, to the bulk 
of our countrymen. 

Shelley’s “ Ode to the Skylark ” furnishes an illustra¬ 
tion ; for, beautiful as it is, it yet lacks the truth that finds 
expression in the popular exclamation, “ Ah ! that is just 
w r hat I felt! ” On the contrary, the Shelleyan mental 
vesture of the skylark is exclusively Shelleyan, and never 
occurred to other than himself, and might, as to the moral 
utterance of the matter, have been attributed to the night¬ 
ingale, or throstle, or blackbird, and equally inapplicable to 
either. An ancient Greek could not have done it with our 
modern belief. The rise of the lark, and its song, and 
return to the nest, beautiful in themselves, yet yield no 
more scope for philosophical and moral wonderment and 
mystery than a paterfamilias going up to town regularly 
to business and returning to his nest to dinner. The bird 
is about its business, and everybody knows it. So wonder¬ 
ment, at the profundity of its thoughts, and its notions of 
good and ill, will find no place in the minds of those who 
think no higher of the skylark than the bulk of our 
people do. 

One difference between a poet of the age of Homer 
and one of modern times is that the ancient believed the 
marvellous he puts in his j>oem—believed it in kind—and 
the modern does not. In Shelley’s “ Skylark ” the false 
philosophy of that part which speaks of the bird’s superior 
notions of matters that trouble ns would have been impos¬ 
sible to a Greek, because, not believing it, he would have 
no idea of saying it for poetic ornament. Shelley did not 
believe it either; but poetic ornament, poetic enthusiasm, 
and what not, which is so familiar to modern ideas of 


188 


On Description in Poetry . 

poetry, led to its expression, and pleases a majority of 
readers, while to a Greek it would have been as incon¬ 
gruous as to have made the dog Argus instead of express¬ 
ing recognition of Odysseus in canine way by wagging his 
tail and so forth, address him in human speech, and bid 
him welcome in excellent Greek, without direct and express 
agency of the gods. 

Their latitude of fiction was indeed large—large as their 
belief, but no larger. The ancient poetry contained no fic¬ 
tion that was impossible in the eyes of the people of those 
days ; nothing that passed their limits of likelihood more 
than the fictions of De Foe, as “ Robinson Crusoe,” for 
example, transcend ours. The value of noting this is the 
historic bearing of very ancient poetry in testifying to the 
belief of the people. The “ Iliad ” and “ Odyssey ” were 
believed in by the ancient Greek.* In striking contrast 
with such credence is modern fiction, which neither nar¬ 
rator nor audience believe. And the more ancient fiction, 
however extravagant, which is believed by both, is presented 
in sharp contrast, because, in pari materia , in the “ Tales 
of the Genii,” by Morell, which none ever believed, with 
the “ Arabian Nights,” implicitly believed in by the Arabs, 
though some few of the more sceptical might look on them 
as we regard De Foe’s stories, as natural narratives of 
probable incidents. The legendary stories of natives and 
the tales in our annuals are differenced in the precise point 
of faith in the one case in narrator and his audience, and 
the absence of it in the other. 

Something akin to this will account also for the lack of 
the fervid in ancient, as compared with modern poetry. 
The same amount of philosophy, and pathos, and poetic 
utterance, could not be wrung out of inanimate nature by 
the ancient poet as by the modern, because the poetry of 

* Horace and Virgil were very modern in this point of view, and 
as little as ourselves, perhaps, believed in their mythology. 


189 


What is Poetry ? 

the former was limited by his belief, and his belief ascribed 
nothing of that kind to those objects when they were not 
supposed to be bodily turned out of their ordinary condi¬ 
tion by the presence of some deity, and their reverential 
feelings towards the gods, their very fear of them, kept 
them from multiplying the legendary instances of such 
interference. A modern, on the contrary, is not limited 
by his belief, and has therefore the whole range of inven¬ 
tion for the imagination to revel in. 


XXVIII. 

WHAT IS POETRY? 

DO not purpose elaborate answer to this ques¬ 
tion. The subject, indeed, eludes definition, 
and, yet, may yield clear notion of itself with¬ 
out one. The aim of poesy is to please and 
ennoble ; its means representation; its form metre. But 
poesy, like virtue, hath parts, and one or other may be 
wanting in a production that yet may claim to be poetry in 
respect of what it has. Virtue, in the absolute, includes 
all the virtues; and yet he is not necessarily a bad man 
who is deficient in one of them, nor virtuous because of 
possessing some, while glaringly wanting in the rest. In 
character there is much balancing required, and so of a 
poem: perfection can be expected in neither, but each must 
be judged of as it recedes from, or approaches the highest 
ideal. 

Of the various notions carelessly entertained on the 
matter the greater part will range under two classes—viz. 
1st, Those which regard poesy as a something divine, that, 
disdaining all rule and law, shines out by its autonomy, and 





190 


What is Poetry ? 

affects us without our being able to explain the why. 2nd, 
Those which regard it as a thing of rules, to be done by 
line and measure, like house-building. Both are right, 
and neither, as usual with extremes. There is a shape and 
fashion in it—yea, line and rule, if you will—and there is- 
also that which transcends them. It were nothing without 
both. To use a figure, on a subject not alien to figure, 
and of a breadth and subtlety above definition, we may 
take the Promethean myth as a fair account of the matter. 
The corpus of poetry is the curiously-fashioned man-frame, 
with all its parts of consummate perfection, dainty and 
intricate, and yet not above the skill of man to note some¬ 
what, and describe. Yet this is but the body, and all, 
indeed, that is open to the scalpel of the critic; but the 
subtle something, that is the life of it, baffles search, and 
escapes in the attempt. Poesy, like man, whose reflex 
it is, hath body and soul, and it is killing it to part 
them. 

Poesy is man so far that it reflects him in his being, 
doings, feelings, and relations ; reflecting him as water re¬ 
flects hill, tree, and sky, where all these, to the fluttering 
leaves and sailing clouds, are not verily, but seem as per¬ 
fectly as if they were; for poetry is imitation, its essence 
is there. It shows not the thing where it is; for that were 
needless, as the thing would show itself, but shows you the 
likeness of the thing in its absence as vividly as if it were 
present before you ; and this of all objects of man’s vision, 
bodily or mental. And, free and boundless as seemetli its 
range, its wonder-working creative faculty is yet all within 
the circle of human vision, and employed on objects clear 
to human eye, bodily or mental. 

It is imitation : it is not the actual, but reflects it; and, 
though it take up the actual, it is only as material to work 
with, as clay to the potter. Thus narrative poetry may 
take history, but it will transcend it, or fall short of its 


Gn the Unseen. 


191 


own aim. Lot us take an example. Suppose it to be told 
that a boat’s crew land on an island, and that one of them, 
wandering from the rest, comes upon a spring, at which he 
would fain refresh himself, but is hindered by a chief of the 
country, who insists on his fighting him first with fists, that 
the fight takes place, and the chief is conquered. This 
story may be told, and clearly told, by naming the parties 
and the place, without any details of the fight, or aught 
else beyond bare mention of the facts. This might be 
history, but could not be poetry—no more poetry than 
naming a lady would be giving her picture. But if, 
instead of bare mention of the island, the particular spot 
in it, where the incident took place, with its fountain, trees, 
and grass, be vividly brought before you; and the chief 
and the newly-arrived stranger seem as if you knew and 
saw them, and the details of the fight and the bearing of 
the combatants be touched so picturesquely that you seem 
to be present at it. This, too, might be History, for she 
often loves to snatch her sister’s pencil; but, without ques¬ 
tion, it would be poetry. And you have it in the 22nd 
Idyll of Theocritus, on the boxing bout between Pollux and 
Amycus. 


XXIX. 

OH THE UHSEEH. 

UBIOSITY about the unseen is not only na¬ 
tural, but the utter want of it argues a defec¬ 
tive temperament. Impatient curiosity, how¬ 
ever, and undue yearning, like all excess, is 
unwise, and illogical, and at variance with other convictions 
of the same person. Hone, surely, is there so unreason¬ 
able as to ask omniscience for a finite creature ; and, if 
there must be limit, we should not quarrel with the placing 



192 


On the Unseen . 


it, unless we can sliow where it could be better placed. In 
its effect of irritating the curiosity it checks, any limit any¬ 
where would be the same, and the impatience that urges 
that irritation as a ground of removing the barrier is an 
argument against its removal. It is its quality of barrier, 
and not the space it encloses, that we quarrel with. To 
that barrier we dart in a straight line, and demand to look 
on the other side, without the shadow of a pretext that we 
have exhausted the unknown on this. 

Restraint is ever irksome to human nature, and the 
sense of it is relative. The captive, fastened to the wall by 
a two-foot chain, would think it comparative freedom to 
move about his cell; admitted to the range of his cell 
the prison were a boon; free of the prison-yard, could 
he but roam the town; admitted to this, then for the 
range of the province; and the heaven of freedom were 
the full range of the kingdom. This obtained, he feels a 
ne exeat regno to be a galling restraint, although the land 
be his country, and that country England. And the feeling 
would be, not only natural, but free from blame; but not 
so free if he suspend activity of thought and action within 
the realm, and keep maundering of what he would like to 
know and do beyond it. 

It is so with our race. God hath placed us here, on this 
earth, in the visible, with a ne exeat regno into the invi¬ 
sible. Occasional yearning for what is beyond, so it hinder 
nothing we should do or think here, is natural and just, 
and, within limits, healthful; but, beyond them, the reverse. 
To be much puzzled with what is out of sight and baffles 
inspection is the silliest thing possible next to the invention 
of plausibilities to lull an idle curiosity. It may be called 
philosophy, inasmuch as the many are too busy to meddle 
with it, but its wisdom is on a par with letting one’s own 
dinner cool while speculating on what the man in the moon 
may be having for his. 


193 


XXX. 

OUR DUTY TO SOCIETY. 

UCH may be said on this subject, and much 
has been said, some of it excellent, but much 
of it trifling. After all, one thing is clear, 
that, of what lies in a man’s option to give or 
refuse, how much he should yield to society is a question 
for him to determine. Take counsel with his friends he 
should, perhaps, in some cases, and, if weak, he probably 
will; for some minds, yea, many, that have a bloom and a 
growth about them very taking to the eye, have the qua¬ 
lity of flourishing ivy, that requires support and a some¬ 
thing to grow to. And, for that matter, if you crave 
advice, without needing help also, you shall never want 
for advisers, ay, and peremptory ones, who will lay out 
your time for you in a very satisfactory manner, especially 
if they be too busy to lay out their own in the same way. 
An idle man with these is an abomination, at bottom 
rather envied, but not the less an abomination. And the 
definition of an idle man, if not always drawn out in 
words, is yet pretty well agreed upon among them, and 
means one who is not employed from morning to night in 
bread-getting or money-making. These look upon him 
as a recreant traitor to the claims of his country, who, not 
being necessitated to work for the sustentation of his body, 
sets seriously about the cultivation of his mind and cha¬ 
racter, or other the like toy or frivolity. If you employ 
your whole time in making more of what you already con¬ 
sider enough they have not a word to say. Active life, like 

o 





194 


Our Duty to Society. 

that, benefits your country, although your prosecution of it 
be only keeping out some one else that would transact the 
same business quite as well, if not better. 

It is, however, to yourself that you are in the first place 
responsible — a responsibility cast on every living soul 
from above. If you like work, and feel it your duty, do 
it; but, if your conviction be the other way, be not 
laughed, or sneered, or cajoled, into doing what, in the long 
run, will not avail you or others. Social action is a duty, 
and sometimes, remember, a stern one, and, if conscien¬ 
tiously discharged, does honour to the man— i. e. it makes 
him deserving of all honour, though, too often, without 
his attaining it, but, on the contrary, encountering bitter¬ 
ness and disappointment; but still, if you act like a man, 
it is well, and worth it, perhaps. 

But if you sit sniggering, and simpering, and bowing, 
and agreeing to everything that is going on, while this job 
is being carried out, and that rascality slurred over, or 
this interest thrust aside that you were sent to defend ; 
then, though your busy men, who mix in these things with 
a very definite object, though they do not always care to 
say what, may extol you as a very gentlemanly and proper 
personage that understands things, and move you votes of 
thanks for your public spirit, &c. you must feel in your 
heart, if it be not turned to leather or paper, that you are 
a mere plausibility, and, for any good that you are, the 
veriest idleness, push-pin, or pulling straws, had been 
better. 

What, then, is a man to live as he likes—emancipate 
from shackle and restraint ? By no means. He cannot, 
if he would, and he should not, if he could. Live, not as 
you like, but as you ought, and you will not. live without 
curb. Restraint is indispensable to progress; all power is 
the growth of it. Without it the stream of our life could 
not channel itself a course, but, like a river without banks, 


195 


Our Duty to Society. 

would spread abroad, and lose itself in a lazy marsh. Ob¬ 
struction, indeed, may be fatal, if stronger than the force 
it generates for its removal, but restraint is not obstruc¬ 
tion. And note well that this restraint must not be to 
the quenching of our individuality, but only accumulated 
obstacles, narrowing, it may be, the sphere of its action, 
but, within that sphere, leaving us free. A man in a 
prison, but with his limbs unshackled, and free to attempt 
to get out if he can, is more at liberty than if he had 
fields to roam in, but loaded with infrangible fetters, which 
last is, at best, the condition of him who foregoes his right 
of private judgment, and puts his conscience in the 
keeping of another. The abnegation of private judgment, 
which some preach up, is but a moral Hindooism, and, 
roundly considered, more pernicious. The poor wretch 
who cast himself under the Juggernaut wheels, attested 
his sincerity, and was crushed clean out of life in so doing, 
while the votaries of our moral Juggernaut still live, and 
try for that significance and influence which they persuade 
themselves they forego. Many, who have quenched pri¬ 
vate judgment in themselves, preach the doctrine all the 
more eagerly to others. It is the old story of the fox 
who had lost his tail, and thereupon harangued his brethren 
on the inutility of a brush. His audience laughed at his 
logic, and kept their tails. So may Englishmen keep to 
the sacred right of private judgment, which lies at the 
bottom of all that is of worth and value in business or 
morals, politics or religion, in this world or the next. 

Wants occur in cycles. TfRPfee great want of modern 
times is individuality. Social action has reached a pitch 
that threatens to destroy that which has so long impeded 
its progress, and without which, nevertheless, further pro¬ 
gress and permanent security are alike impossible. As 
long as the tendency of too intense an individuality was to 
multiply points of repulsion, which the social spirit had to 


196 


Childhood. 


overcome, the successful overcoming what then was sheer 
obstacle was real progress; but now that all harmful indi¬ 
viduality is impossible, a continuance of that course follows 
the law of all human action that passes its term and 
object, and becomes retrograde. 


XXXI. 

CHILDHOOD. 

OYS are inexperienced men, only more clear of 
crotchets, and with quicker general powers of 
observation than in after-life. A shrewd adult 
may often learn as much from a child as the 
child from him, only of a different kind. The child has 
his knowledge, although he be not so sure of it, and it lies 
on the fresher side of things. The adult is surer of his, 
and he dives deeper, and, too often, misses many a truth 
that floats on the surface. Much might be gathered, for 
instance, as to the phenomena of language, by carefully 
noting the early struggles of the child with his mother- 
tongue. The attempts to express itself, strange and feeble 
as they be, may probably belong to that broad field of 
thought-utterance in the human race, of which each 
vernacular idiom is but an elaborate variety. 

A real child is worth kidnapping; for, to say the truth, 
they be rare. Most of them cease to be children in this 
respect, years before they have any pretensions to be men. 
This is partly from the hurried pace at which life is every¬ 
where set, and partly from the injudiciousness of those 
about them at an early period. A child may be jeered 
and laughed at, or knuckle-rapped, or otherwise punished, 
and exposed to the derision of his schoolmates, for asking 






Childhood. 


197 


a question, in itself very pregnant, but to which there is no 
answer in Pinnock, and therefore past the self-satisfied 
Dominie’s ability to appreciate ; who thereupon snutfs out 
the querist, to the great encouragement of originality in 
the boys. And for the lad himself there is risk that he 
will think for himself no more, but try to look as he can 
through such spectacles as are offered him, whether they 
suit his sight or no. How many young minds have been 
put out of all active existence in this world by such moral 
Herods is sad to think of. 

The child, the real child, untampered with, and unspoilt, 
and with the freshness of childhood upon him, may often 
see the little cloud “ as big as a man’s hand,” though it be 
for the man’s prophet-experience to interpret the pheno¬ 
menon. Our prepossessions cloud our judgment even on 
surface-matters, and our faculties, one or so, get sharpened 
at the expense of the rest, which are allowed to rust. In 
a child’s mind there is more balance ; none of his faculties 
have the artificial strength of the adult’s exclusive exercise 
of one, but all of them are in play. I am not drawing 
comparison between the two states in preference of either, 
hut calling attention to the fact of their difference, and the 
nature of it. A child is horn, perhaps, with an aptitude 
for all the occupations of maturer life, but the man will be 
found to have lost that aptitude, or exchanged it, rather, 
for one more intense in that which he selects as his life- 
labour. Not only do the general aptitudes for lack of 
exercise, not grow, but they wither and all but disappear, 
like the muscles of the body, which dwindle if out of use. 
The development of the dancer’s leg, and the blacksmith’s 
arm, and the student’s brow, are distinctions that use hath 
wrought out of an equality in all these when the boys were 
born. 

"Whatever an adult’s experience, and practised power, it 
would often profit him to be able to view things without the 


198 


Childhood. 


bias of that experience, to take fresh observations of the sun 
at different points of his life-voyage, clear of the clouds of his 
prepossessions, that float between him and it. This, how¬ 
ever is impossible. Ubiquity of mind is, in some respects, as 
impossible as ubiquity of body. No one can, in this sense, 
be a man and a child at one and the same time. The 
man’s experience cannot be cast from him as a cloak, and 
still less, God be thanked, can it be thrown upon the child ; 
nor can the child’s freshness be in the man. But the child 
may use the adult’s experience, or rather quicken his own 
by it, and the adult, if he be wise, may profit by the child’s 
freshness of observation, by registering and noting what 
the young can report of how things strike these little 
strangers in this worn world of ours, this inexhaustible, 
myriad-faced world, which some of us, in our weariness, 
yet fancy we have exhausted. 

But this profiting is not so easy as one might suppose. 
It is not so easy to catch real children. Their observing 
power is great; but much is done by those about them to 
abridge it early, by foolish wonderment at a phenomenon, 
from which its commonness should by this time have 
banished wonder, but that in every household the pheno¬ 
menon is fresh. The family wonder is perpetually renewed, 
though as a state matter it be stale enough. As things 
run at present, the young mother, to whom her child is not 
a marvel, is herself a miracle. 

The result is natural, but not the less disastrous. And it 
happens more among the middle class than the lower, because 
of the larger leisure that the mothers have for wondering 
at their children and spoiling them. The business of a 
child, that nature itself puts on it, is to observe, and ask. 
It is no more wonderful than feeding, sleeping, and breath¬ 
ing, though quite as necessary to his mental, as those to 
his physical growth. But this mental growth is presently 
stopped. The child at first asked questions from a yearning 


Legend and Language . 199 

to know. The fond mother, or aunt, or nurse, marvels at 
his questions. The child soon sees his importance, and 
the source of it, and thenceforth sets himself to ask 
questions, not for the knowledge that he desires to have, 
but to be admired for asking* them. His progress is then 
stopped, as far as anything in our elastic nature can be; 
and he may go on, asking fifty questions for one, that he 
cares to have answered, until the weariness of the adults 
puts an end to it. And then,—what then ? He gets on 
as well as he can, but the freshness of life is somewhat 
tarnished for him. The questions, which the view of things 
at one age would have suggested to him, to the profit of 
his after-life, will not recur at a later stage, and he will go 
on with more or less of ignorance of what he ought to know, 
according as the season of fresh contact with things was 
neglected, or otherwise. 


XXXTI. 

LEGEND AND LANGUAGE. 

HE yearning for novelty, the eager curiosity, 
that marks our race, hath yet the miser’s 
stamp upon it of not willingly parting with 
anything. The craving for novelty is a grow¬ 
ing one, and may be exampled any where, but tenacity of 
the old, though still strong, was perhaps more charac¬ 
teristic of past times. 

On two points this tenacity is remarkable, legend and 
language. The people, of themselves, change neither. 
The change is always from some powerful extrinsic agency. 
A poet of a people could no more change its legends than 






200 Legend and Language . 

he could alter its tongue. The pertinacious literalness 
with which a people will adhere to both, and the intense¬ 
ness of that pertinacity in ancient times, may be appre¬ 
ciated at this day by reflection and experiment. Let a 
man among the people hazard a new word, or a new pro¬ 
nunciation of an old one, and a chorus of laughter will 
greet his experiment. They will none of it. If it were 
otherwise a language Avould not last a generation. If he 
tell one of their legends, and vary from the received form, 
he will be greeted with interruption on all sides, and set 
right here, and set right there, until he fall into the 
orthodox channel. Were it otherwise the legend would 
vary with the caprice of every individual, and cease to be 
a legend or story received by a whole tribe or people. 
The tendency to be literal, even to self-correction, on the 
part of the narrator, in minutiae, of no moment to the 
point of the story, is too common among the simpler and 
less informed to need insisting on further. 

But for this pertinacious adherence to a common 
standard, how could such intangible things as sounds be 
transmitted so uniformly and so accurately, from genera¬ 
tion to generation, that a whole tribe shall pronounce them 
exactly alike ? How, too, could they so nicely and per¬ 
manently discriminate between sounds that are often so 
similar that foreigners have to spend weeks in even under¬ 
standing the difference ? 

And, as to the legends of a people, an individual were 
powerless in effecting a change in them. The contrary 
belief is, methinks, an error bred of too hasty reference 
to ourselves in the matter. We read an ancient poet, who 
tells what we know to be false, and which we know the 
people believed; and we fancy that the poet invented, 
and made them believe it. But the fact is that the poet, 
no less than the people, believed it; and their fathers 


Legend and Language. 201 

believed it before lie was born; and lie, in the mirror of 
his poesy, but holds up to them their common belief. 

33ut for this tenaciousness of the known, and adherence 
to standard, a language could never exist, but must vola¬ 
tilize and evaporate as fast as it formed. It is this alone 
that makes its formation possible, and stamps it with dura¬ 
tion—a duration equal to that of the race, but for extrinsic 
causes. If no foreign influence from without operated on 
a people’s language, they would no more change it than 
the blackbirds and throstles of their woods alter the 
notes they have had from the beginning. It is an error 
to talk of a language changing by the gradual course of 
time by the people themselves. The instrument may 
vibrate to a larger and more varied music as their ideas 
expand, but the new melodies will be but combinations of 
the same notes, and played with the same keys. One 
ground of supposing self-change in a language is the 
variation in orthography, which is very variable before a 
people have agreed by what letters to express different 
sounds— i. e. how they shall spell what they speak. But 
the error of taking the variations of early orthography as 
variations in the sounds, or the words they are intended 
to represent, will be plain to any one who will compare the 
different ways in which illiterate persons attempt to spell 
words, which, nevertheless, they all pronounce exactly 
alike—words which, read aloud by the parties who wrote 
them, would resume their identity, but which, if read by 
an educated person according to his notion of the powers 
of the letters, might be recognized by none. 

And the error is further fostered by the changes which 
have been effected by the admixture of cognate tribes, 
whose various words from similar roots subsist together, 
and give the notion of the people changing their own 
tongue. But a little reflection will convince one that a 
people who could originate such changes would never have 


202 


Legend and Language . 

had a language to change ; for language can only subsist 
as a common medium of interchanging thought by a rigid 
adhesion to fixed words and forms, which is totally incom¬ 
patible with the admission of such changes in the medium 
itself. 

But different tribes, having each its separate language, 
on joining together would, in their mutual attempts at 
intercommunication, give rise to a language that, par¬ 
taking of the nature of both, would have an individual 
character distinct from either. Such departure from the 
original type of each neither tribe would have permitted 
in an individual, and there would have been no motive, 
were the thing possible, for the great body attending it. 
What individual among the Normans in France could 
have persuaded his countrymen to use the terms ox, calf, 
sheep, to designate those animals ? Or what Anglo-Saxon 
could have obtained prevalence among his people for the 
terms beef, veal, mutton? The social requirements, how¬ 
ever, of the two people settling down together obtained 
their mutual acceptance of both terms; a compromise by 
which the animal dead is designated as at the table of 
the Norman lord, and living, as the Saxon herdsman 
or shepherd had been accustomed to call it. It is in this 
way that language stereotypes the history of a people. 

Remarkable, also, is the tenacity with which a people 
clings to its legendary lore. But, in maintaining the ina¬ 
dequacy of individual operation on the legends of a 
country to alter or invent, it may be asked how did they 
originate ? This is a difficult question, and one which 
scarcely admits of definite and absolute answer, but it is 
not hard to conceive circumstances under which they may 
have grown. The historical legend would root in the 
traditional adventures of the tribe, and the marvellous and 
monstrous in their superstitions. But, among the ade¬ 
quate sources for their original, and especially of the 


203 


Legend and Language. 

latter, I should rank the proneness to Apologue, that has 
ever characterized the East. The antiquity of Apologue 
is certainly sufficient to underlie all the legendary lore of 
both Northern and Southern nations. Stories told, in 
which animals are the actors, and which at their outset 
were received as fable, presented nothing to shock a faith 
to which it did not appeal, and would obtain ready re¬ 
ception among the people in whose tongue the apologue 
was invented. When transmitted, however, by oral trans¬ 
lation to other countries, the names of the actors, per¬ 
haps, retained, and their significance as animals lost sight 
of, the lion, and the bear, and the wolf, for example, 
would figure as men, under appellations which, in the 
original, stood for those animals, but which, in the lan¬ 
guage into which they are imported, having no significance, 
stand for proper names. And the incidents, tenaciously 
clung to, would yet be understood of human actors or 
divine, according to circumstances. Marvellous instances 
might easily arise by transferring feats of strength from 
animals to men. A lion might put a crowd of shepherds 
to flight, and an elephant, or a hippopotamus, tear off a 
branch from a tree, or overturn the tree itself, and the 
incidents of the apologue be in perfect keeping with the 
known habits of the animal. But, transferred to a human 
actor, these exploits rise at once to the prodigious. And 
this habit of narrating the wonderful, and what transcends 
experience of the audience, once admitted, it would be diffi¬ 
cult to put limits to the fiction, beyond the one limit which 
the sense of the probable usually necessitates, viz. that of 
relegating the scene of the marvel to a distance in place 
or time. It must be stated as occurring far off, or 
long ago. 

Other sources of the marvellous in the legend may be 
found in the relation of the conquered and conquering 
people in a country. The poets of the latter exaggerat- 


204 Legend and Language. 

mg the exploits of their ancestors, and, conversely o f the 
people subdued, especially if the latter have been for the 
most part expelled, may represent the vanquished as giants. 
Again, where there is actual difference of stature between 
two nations that are in contact, as Caesar relates of the 
Gauls, who ridiculed the Romans as dwarfs —Be Bell . 
Gall. lib. ii. c. 30. If the shorter people expel the taller, 
legends will be rife of giants overcome by force or guile 
by men of ordinary stature. The consciousness of truth 
will not allow a reversal of the facts, which, however 
they may he coloured, will not err in ascribing policy and 
intellectual superiority to the smaller and prevailing race, 
while obtuseness and physical strength are the portion of 
the conquered. Jack the Giant-killer will be the popular 
expression of the relations between them. 

But if, on the other hand, it be the powerful and large- 
limbed people that have prevailed over one less physically 
favoured, then stories of dwarfs will be rife, whose power 
of secreting themselves and their treasures from human 
sight, will express the condition of the oppressed remnant 
of a proscribed people, who endeavour to elude the notice 
and rapacity of their oppressors. 

Stories of travellers would augment the lore among a 
people once prepared for its reception. Who knows but 
penguins, standing stupidly of a row on the sea-sliore, and 
seen by some Phoenician trader, as his vessel shot by, may 
have originated the Homeric legend of the pigmies and 
cranes, and the wars waged between them—actual wars, 
probably, in their struggles for fish. 

Another source of the marvellous legend willl be found 
in the natural phenomena of a country.' The mirage of 
the desert and the Pata Morgana are more than enough 
to underlie the wildest Oriental fiction. Echoes, also, in 
wild regions, amid rocks, and woods, and precipices, and 
foaming waterfalls, would impress the most unimaginative 


On Literal Translation. 


205 


with a sense of the supernatural. And the gigantic 
spectre that walks in mist before the traveller in the Hartz 
mountains may not always find him sufficiently self-pos¬ 
sessed to ascertain that it is but his own reflection maa’ni- 
fled that companions and affrights him. 


XXXIII. 


ON LITERAL TRANSLATION IN LEARNING 

A LANGUAGE. 

N buying second-hand books, I am always 
curious about the comments of former owners, 
and inspect the margins with some interest. A 
Greek Herodotus that I picked up yesterday 
(15tli August, 1862), for its cheapness and excellent type, 
has pencilled comments of a former owner, evidently a 
student, and of some vigour, and who hath the excellent 
habit of noting how long it took him to get through such 
and such strokes of work. On the Euterpe he notes that 
he “ began it January 5th, 1847/’ and at the end that ho 
“ finished it on the 13th January, 1847, by himself.” I 
have noted some of the pencilled meanings to words, 
which, apparently for helping his memory, he has placed 
in the margin, as they will illustrate the kind of transla¬ 
tion usual in such case. He would appear to have been 
more anxious for idiomatic English rendering of the par¬ 
ticular passage than careful of the intrinsic force of the 
word itself in the original, and has therefore given the 
meaning of the phrase, but not with the meaning of the 
words. The defect of the method is that, even where a 
passage is vigorously rendered, the student makes but 





206 


On Literal Translation in 


little progress in exact knowledge of Greek, because he is 
in the habit of importing ideas which do not belong to the 
word itself, although they go very well with the idea for 
which the word stands in that place, but will not go well 
with the idea for which the word will stand where he next 
meets with it. And yet, in both cases, the word itself 
means the same tiling, although in the one it will bear to 
be capped with an addition, that it will reject in the 
other. 

Taking instances at random, at Herod, vi. 15, ouk 
xaltuv, he renders “ disdained ,” which is, no doubt, meant 
for a vigorous rendering of they “judged it not right,” 
and expresses a tone of mind very probable under the cir¬ 
cumstances, but of that tone the word itself says nothing. 
The notion of contemptuous warmth in the matter, though 
it invigorate here, will, in another part, but embarrass the 
student if he attempt to clog the word with what does not 
belong to it. 

At vi. 16, a^uvarov, he renders “disabled,” which is 
well enough in that passage, for the ships had been “ dis¬ 
abled but, nevertheless, aduvaTog means simply unable 
at the time, weak, feeble, and has no reference to a former 
vigour, which is implied in the word “ disabled.” aduvaroi 
oiv'opsg, at v. 9, are weak, feeble men, imbecilli, parum 
robusti, and not “ disabled.” 

At vi. 13, iv ttsfisi kTroizuvro vrspiTroiriaai, he renders, 
“ considered themselves lucky in saving,” instead of, “ they 
thought it a gain,” &c. The two phrases agree well 
enough for the particular passage, but yet ueftog is not 
“ luck,” but “ gain.” The legitimate and expected profit 
of a trader would hardly be called “ luck,” though it be 
Ksftog. 

At v. 92, /juctiQovurtfov, he renders “ more defiled with 
blood;” and this idea of “blood” is given in the dic¬ 
tionaries, and yet I should prefer adhering to the sole 


207 


Learning a Language. 

notion expressed, viz. “ slaughter,” from <pevco 9 to kill; 
“ slaughter-stained ” would be good rendering, and the 
one that will always he serviceable, meet the word where 
you will. It is true that “ blood ” and “ slaughter ” go 
much together, hut they are not inseparable, or the lancet 
would be put from its function ; /xiaupovog, as an epithet of 
Ares, frequent in the Iliad, means literally “ slaughter- 
stained,” which, of course, is “ blood-stained,” because of 
the blood shed in battle, but it is the “ slaughter ” alone 
that is expressed ; the “ blood” is understood and included 
in stained ; contrary to ai/xaroEig, which, under circum¬ 
stances, may he rendered “ murderous,” but in which the 
“ blood ” is expressed, the “ slaughter ” not. To the ren¬ 
dering of a particular passage the distinction may he 
trivial, but to the accurate knowledge of the language, 
and keeping your ideas clear, it is of the utmost import¬ 
ance. And the practice of holding fast by the precise 
root-meaning of the word will operate favourably for the 
student in ridding him of the tsedium of looking out the 
same word over and over again in his dictionary. This 
necessity of looking out the same word repeatedly is too 
familiar to most students of the classics, and impedes 
their progress. The cause is clear. The student looks 
out a word a second time through failing to catch the 
precise root-meaning at the first, and taking, instead of it, 
a secondary and side meaning, which is rather the method 
of expressing the idea in his own tongue than in that from 
which he is translating. And the odds are that, unless he 
mend his method, what he did the first time he will repeat 
a second and a third, and so continue, until a better 
instinct, almost unconsciously, after longer contact with 
the classics than is allowed to the bulk, shall have brought 
him into better relation to those tongues. But, in any 
case, the defect of the method will cling to him until he is 
aware of its being defective, and sets vigorously about the 


208 


On Literal Translation in 


cure of it. The necessity of the cure, and the reward of 
his pains in setting about it, is neither more nor less than 
entering into the genius and spirit of the language and 
literature of Greece and Rome, and the very mind of the 
people themselves, of which that language and literature 
yield so large and adequate expression. The life of a 
people is stamped upon its tongue; and the ammonite is 
not more truly preserved in its ancient fossil-bed than is 
the form and pressure of that antique people in the rich 
remains that have reached us of their language and lite¬ 
rature. 

But, to get at this rich yield from the study of a foreign 
tongue, it behoves the English student to forget for a 
while that he is English, and, on the very banks of the 
stream, strip to the skin before he plunges in. Unless he 
do this—unless he rid himself of mere English modes of 
thought and expression, and allow his mind to come in 
close contact with the Greek or Latin thought and expres¬ 
sion—he will never thoroughly understand those people to 
the full of the opportunity that the possession of their 
remains affords us. Nay, further, an English mist will 
be always between him and them, altering the proportions 
of what is seen through it, and, to that extent, preventing 
his feeling the flesh and blood relation that exists between 
us and them. Short of this, in spite of a respectable 
acquaintance with their works, we shall see, indeed, 
but not as clearly as we might. How many that read 
Demosthenes, in the Greek even, have adequate im¬ 
pression of what that marvellous mirror of Athenian 
life, his orations, reflects ? Of the orator’s mind itself 
what idea have they? How far Greek, or how far 
draped in English thought and expression? An ideal, 
probably, as unlike the original set forth in those fire¬ 
breathing words of his, as if a skilled sculptor were 
to carve a bodily presentment of the orator in swallow- 


Learning a Language. 209 

tails, tights, and patent leather boots, and set it by the 
statue in the Vatican. 

The only method of entering into the spirit of the ori¬ 
ginal is to accept the exact expression of the original as 
its own, however strange, instead of substituting our own 
because more familiar to ourselves. In other words, for 
learning any language, stick to the literal in translating 
for yourself, for this is very different from translation for 
readers in your own tongue, where you must preserve 
intact the genius of the tongue into which you are trans¬ 
lating, and on no account violate its syntax for conformity 
to the original. The instruction to be conveyed by such 
violation would be unfitted for any but students; but all 
modes of expression that will go in English should be 
preserved in characteristic works, even in a version for the 
mere English reader, as hath been so happily done in our 
translation of the Bible. 

Even, however, in our Bible, there are instances in 
which the principle of literal version might have been car¬ 
ried further without detriment. The following is an 
instance, with which this Essay may appropriately con¬ 
clude. At Matthew xxv. 43, yu/xvog, kou ou TTEgiEfiateTE /ae, 
our version has “ naked, and ye clothed me not,” which is 
the true rendering of the sentiment, but not of the mode 
of conveying it in the original. The direct word for 
“ clothed,” in Greek, the Evangelist has not employed 
here. It is not said, “ naked and ye clothed me not,” but 
“ naked and ye did not throw (anything) round me,” 
which is a pictorial expression of the fact, and, in this 
case, not alien to our English mode of expressing it. 1 
am not impugning the translation, for it is correct enough, 
but for the purposes of study it would be neglectful in the 
student to rest there. The advantage of his keeping to 
the idea of “ cast ” instead of “ clothe ” is that the idea 
will cling to the word wherever he finds it; but he may 

p 


210 


How to make a Lawyer . 

meet with the word in its compounds and ^separately over 
and over again, with no suggestion of “ clothing .” One 
result of taking TTEpifiaXXco as “ clothe ” would be that, 
when authors use it in its literal sense, you would credit 
them with metaphor where none was intended. Here, 
indeed, “ clothe ” would describe the act without meta¬ 
phor, but in Eurip. Phceniss. 1453, 7TEgt@ccWEi /xe ctkoto 
“ darkness surrounds me,” if you render it “ darkness 
clothes me,” you furnish a metaphor where there was 
none. What prospect is there, then, of progress for a 
student, or of his catching the sense of an author, if he 
miss the metaphors when they occcur, and introduce them 
where they do not? From the whole, it may be con¬ 
cluded, then, that literal version is very helpful in 
language-learning, and the writer accordingly commends 
it to every student of a tongue that he is anxious to tho¬ 
roughly master. 


XXXIV. 

HOW TO MAKE A LAWYEK. 

PIE topic is of too limited an interest for ela¬ 
borate exposition here, and yet, as within the 
experience of the writer, a few words upon it 
may not be amiss ; but only a few, and as they 
occur to him, without regard to sequence and order, where 
space excludes completeness. Hot many will care for 
quasi lecturing of this sort—perhaps none ; and yet, as 
every writer thinks he is addressing something worth to 
some one willing to hear it, be it supposed that the fol¬ 
lowing is fit to profit somebody, and will find the some¬ 
body, viz. a sturdy student committed to the law. I say 






211 


How to make a Lawyer. 

committed; for otherwise, in an overstocked profession, it 
were better, perhaps, to dissuade him from passing the 
Rubicon, which ten cross for two that find their account 
in it. But, having crossed, and being a sturdy student, 
with a power of work in him, there is not one discouraging 
word to be said. Yet, having firm grip of his button lest 
he should escape, I shall profit by the occasion, auresque 
ejas lepido susurro permidceam. 

There is one drawback to your profession which it were 
well for you to mitigate in your own person as early as 
possible; and it is that you cannot practise it out of this 
country, or at most in the colonies. A doctor, or engineer, 
or musician, with many others, may ply his calling in 
other countries if the vicissitudes of life take him thither; 
hut for the mere English lawyer there is no such field. 
As far as it rests with you, therefore, it were prudent so 
to prosecute the study of the law as not to be a mere 
English lawyer. In other words, pitch the foundation of 
your studies with a breadth that, while it includes the most 
exact efficiency in English law, shall not rest them, hut 
extend its efficiency much further. Your profession, 
solidly and broadly studied, will fit you for any efficient 
and liberal exertion of mind in many branches of learning 
and literature, while a narrow and lean study of it will as 
effectually unfit you. 

Broad counsels are vague, and special ones too open to 
divergence to make advice of much value that goes beyond 
just pointing to the field where profitable labour is pos¬ 
sible, and then leaving you to choose for yourself. I hope 
it will be superfluous to urge on you the value of being 
timely and zealous. What you mean to do, do early, and 
bring your whole mind to bear on everything you do. 
You will find it good to exercise yourself from the very 
first in writing, by throwing your thoughts on paper 
touching everything that comes before you. The exercise 


212 


How to make a Lawyer . 

will advance your knowledge a hundredfold, and keep it 
clear; and you will grow into efficiency as a writer by the 
very best method, viz. writing about what you are intent 
on and understand, instead of scribbling vaguely upon that 
about which you know little and care less. 

It were well for you to resolve on making yourself 
master of Latin and French, and, if you have any apti¬ 
tude for languages, you may prosecute it with advantage 
to your general culture, and to your efficiency as an en¬ 
lightened lawyer, viz. by reading books on history and 
jurisprudence in those languages, always remembering 
that you have no time to throw away. Your Latin, for 
example, would be profitably exercised in reading “ Justi¬ 
nian’s Institutes,” and as much of the Corpus Juris Civilis 
as you can, and Grotius “ De Jure Belli et Pacis,” with 
Barbeyrac’s Notes; and your French by Puffendorff, 
“ Law of Nature and Nations ”—in Barbeyrac’s transla¬ 
tion, mind, not in the Latin, which is not an original worth 
stickling for. Add to these Vattel, Pothier, and Montes¬ 
quieu’s “ Esprit de Lois,” and De Tocqueville’s writings, 
and no one will justly accuse you of swerving from the 
aims of your profession. A pocket Horace will sweeten 
the thing for you, and you will find Tacitus very brac¬ 
ing ; and both, in their various ways, remarkable for 
apt expression of pregnant matter, and good dieting for a 
lawyer; and for your French, Moliere has a weight and 
value, and a world-wide experience and insight into life, 
that cannot but profit you in making yourself as intimate 
as you can with this the foremost mind of France. How¬ 
ever, if you are worth advising, you will soon pitch a scale 
of study suited to your acquirements, with very little need 
of advice. But, on any plan, there is one thing you 
should not overlook, and which, I had almost said, you 
cannot overrate, viz. the value of odd times, of odd half- 
hours, or smaller portions of time, which take up so much 


213 


How to make a Laicyer. 

of the most active life, and which, if improved, instead of 
being slighted as fractions, would add so much to its effi¬ 
ciency. A great lawyer, the French Chancellor d’Agues- 
seau, felt the force of this, and is said to have written a 
bulky volume on the law by only dedicating to it the 
time that his wife kept him waiting while she was get¬ 
ting ready for dinner, a drive, or the like. Whatever 
amount of truth there may be in the anecdote, the principle 
it illustrates is important, viz. that to make the most of 
life we must not only properly apply the larger portions 
of time that normally belong to our business in it, but 
also earnestly note, and turn to profit, the smaller frag¬ 
ments that strew its course, and which we are too prone to 
turn to no account at all, because each separately cannot 
be turned to large account. You are too early for your 
appointment, or your friend is too late. A book will use 
up the interval very profitably; and you would do well to 
have one always about you. And as the importance of 
the bits of time that you thus put to profit lies in the 
aggregate of them, and their drawback being that they 
are fractions, and so unfitted separately for a long stroke 
of work, you will mend this defect by consecutive reading, 
not taking up any volume for the nonce, and reading here 
and reading there, hap-hazard ; for such reading is next 
to worthless, but, keeping to a volume until you have read 
it through, and then taking another that will profit and 
pleasure you to read through, and dealing with it in the 
same manner. In this way the odd half-hours, or lesser 
fractions of time, while they are interruptions of one occu¬ 
pation, will be a continuance of some other, for which you 
reserve them, and so help in keeping your life braced 
together. 

I fear, however, that if you aim at being a good lawyer, 
and with breadth of culture, you will have to make up 
your mind to forego much recreation that you will be 


214 


Uoiv to make a Lawyer . 

invited to. You will have to be a close economist of your 
time. An hour at this period is more precious than a week 
ten years later. Roundly speaking, the main treasure 
you will have to draw upon in after-life must he amassed 
now. It is this, and this only, with the growth of it, that 
you will have to reckon on. 

You will have your newspaper, doubtless, hut read it 
rapidly. If you read novels let it be sparingly, and with 
choice. With periodicals, in the bulk, do not attempt to 
cope; they are enough to fritter away the youth of a 
Methuselah. This, remember, is your seed-time, and so 
too early for harvest-home indulgence, if you be earnest in 
your purposes of life. Let not the example of others guide 
you in this matter. Some of your young friends may be 
of callings for which attendance at the place of business is 
sufficient during the apprenticeship, but for a lawyer it is 
not so, whether barrister or attorney. To profit by his 
attendance in the counsel’s chambers, or at the office, he 
must read up to it at home. The bustle of business will 
not allow of his doing more than take notes of what he has 
to prosecute farther at home by himself. 

Discussion societies are good, if well conducted and 
properly used. In debating, be careful to be well informed 
on the subject, and say what you have to say in as few 
words as possible, always endeavouring to confine yourself 
to the question, however little others may observe it. 
Rambling from the point is convenient for introducing alien 
topics and facilitating a man’s keeping on his legs, but it 
is a pernicious practice to the speaker, and not always pro¬ 
fitable to the hearer. But, as your object is not to hear 
yourself talk, nor to be praised for your much speaking, 
but simply for self-improvement, avoid the besetment as 
you would shrink from an adder. There is no greater dis¬ 
cipline than discussion when the speaker keeps to the 
point, and nothing, perhaps, much worse than a glib 


215 


How to make a Lawyer. 

method of rambling from it. Above all, never warmly 
advocate the side that you feel is wrong merely because 
you are assigned to support it. It will be proper for you 
to maintain either side, i. e. to bring forward all that can 
be said in its favour; but, when the side assigned is the 
wrong one, let your support be marked by a total absence 
of warmth. 

Without entering into the specialties applicable to the 
solicitor and the barrister, suffice it to say that, in your 
studies, you should avoid the extreme, on the one hand, 
of driving too many horses abreast, or of supposing, on 
the other, that the law can, or ought, to absorb you. Next 
to knowing no law, the worst lawyer is, perhaps, be who 
knows nothing but law. Mode of study is of more conse¬ 
quence than quantity ; the “ bow ” and the “ what ” than 
the “ bow much.” 

On text-books nothing need be said ; but on the re¬ 
ports, be it observed that they form a very characteristic 
feature in our legal system, and offer especial advantage to 
the student. In them the case and the pleadings are 
briefly but sufficiently set forth, with summary of the argu¬ 
ments of counsel on each side, and very full statement of 
the decision of the court. These, in a series, from the 
reign of Edward II. inclusive to the present time, form a 
body of thoroughly argued law, exhibiting, not the prin¬ 
ciples only, but the case and occasion to which they are 
applied. The rigidness with which our system of pleading 
elicited special pregnant points for the judge’s decision, 
and eliminated all irrelevant matter, gives a precision to 
these judgments quite unattainable in a system of proce¬ 
dure where the judge is left to hover over the whole case 
unabridged in its original compass of truth and falsehood, 
of error in fact and in law. The series will, of course, not 
be attacked in its mass by the student, but at special parts 
pointed out by his legal tutor. 


216 How to make a Lawyer . 

In grappling with them the yield is twofold : in the law 
that you get from them, and the discipline they give. In 
their study strike always for the principle which governs 
the decision. Steady hold of principles in your reading, 
both of text-books and of cases, will make your progress 
seem, indeed, slow, while it is in reality great, and will 
ultimately enable you to deal with new matter in a w r ay 
that a mere case-crammed head would never attain. Your 
study of a case, if conducted on this plan, will not he 
thrown away, though the case be overruled. The principle 
on which it is decided will usually be found to flow from 
principles stated or assumed in the argument; the error in 
the case oftener turning upon a misapplication of the prin¬ 
ciple than its denial. 

One requisite of both branches of the profession is a 
conscience, notwithstanding the vulgar error that a lawyer, 
of all men, can least afford to keep one. The thorough 
lawyer has one very staunch ally in this matter, viz. habit. 
He is so accustomed to strike for what is really the law, 
so disturbed at what will not stand the test of badgering 
and contest in open court, that he is rather prone to fall 
into the extreme of over-rigidity. Queer tricks, and 
things of a nature to shrink from the overhauling of a 
judge and jury, and the severe solemn conclave of the 
respected heads of the profession, too much trouble the 
stream in which his life runs not to be alien to him. The 
temptations to which men yield are usually those which 
fall in with the current of their life, and not run counter 
to it. Accordingly we find that the tricksy ones, that dis¬ 
grace the profession by their practice, are usually those 
that equally disgrace it by their ignorance. 

On the matter of conscience, if you aspire to the bar, 
shun the shallow notion that every case must have a right 
and a wrong in it, and, therefore, that the advocating one 
side would be with conscience, the other against it. The 


217 


IIoiv to make a Lawyer . 

statement of the difficulty is plausible, but, like many 
plausible things, infamously untrue. Indeed, if you want 
an untruth to do the most mischief, wrap it in a plausibi¬ 
lity. It is like a tasteless poison in your coffee; you are 
drinking death when you least think. Not that the notion 
we speak of is so serious. Those who harbour it give it 
practical refutation. All the world goes to law, and each 
side thinks himself right in ninety-nine cases out of the 
hundred. And not the parties only, but their professional 
advisers mostly; for it is but doubtful cases, remember, 
that are put to decision ; and resolving a doubt is the very 
thing they are seeking. These doubts have two sources, 
law and fact, and the latter the more fertile of the two; 
for the facts cannot always be known till the parties are 
confronted in court; each side, too often, keeping back 
from their legal adviser some little matter, as they 
choose to think it, but which, in their heart of heart, they 
were loth to touch on from doubts of its prudence or 
probity, and which they had hoped might slip by unno¬ 
ticed. 

Let any layman that hath strong hold of the notion we 
are impugning attend a few causes at Nisi Prius, and, 
having heard both sides, honestly ask himself at each of 
the following stages wdiich way the decision ought to be :— 
1 st, at close of plaintiff’s case ; 2nd, at close of defendant’s 
case ; 3rd, after the plaintiff’s reply; 4th, after the judge’s 
summing up, and while the jury are retiring to consider 
their verdict. After No. 1, did he think plaintiff in the 
right; after No. 2, did his opinion turn to the defendant; 
after No. 3, back to the plaintiff, to be again wonderfully 
modified by the bearings of the matter as put by the judge ; 
and, lastly, will he correctly anticipate the verdict of the 
twelve lawful men and true ? Let him remember that the 
plaintiffs lawyer, before bringing the action, was in full pos¬ 
session but of No. 1, and the defendant’s of No. 2, and 


218 


On Dramatic Entertainments . 


might honestly think what he Avould not have thought had 
he possessed our layman’s advantage of hearing the whole 
case without disguise. 

Having rid yourself, if you ever harboured it, of such 
objection in limine to your profession, beware of another 
much more serious error, and one which will prove a very 
lion in the path if you quell it not at the outset. Beware 
of the notion of buckling-to by-and-by. That by-and- 
by will never come. Act clean contrary to any such dawd¬ 
ling. Let the first six months be your hardest; work as 
if you had hut that before you, and, when it is over, 
take it easy, if you think fit. If, however, you are fit for 
anything, you will not think fit, but, having the habit of 
work on you, go on, and, with somewhat of surprise, find 
that, though the difficulties be many, they will never accu¬ 
mulate on any one point with the dogged “ stir-me-if-you- 
can ” aspect that greeted you at the first. 


XXXV. 

OH DRAMATIC ENTERTAINMENTS. 

HAT large class of persons who love the cheap 
rhetoric of arguing against a thing from its 
abuse, may talk as they will, but there are few 
amusements, open to large numbers, that are 
more pleasant or more instructive than a well-presented 
good play. 

“ The play’s the thing ” for occasional and pregnant 
recreation. With a companion ’twere best, provided it be 
one that goes there for the sake of the play, and not 
merely to escape from himself, or he may trouble you with 
that self to the prejudice of what is going on behind the 







On Dramatic Entertainments. 219 

foot-lights. My friends are not play-goers, and, there¬ 
fore, when they do go, make it a matter of preparation 
and forecast, the precise thing that, with me, would strip 
the pleasure of half its zest. Amusement I hate to be 
fixed for, and, where possible, would always prefer its being 
improvised. With regard to this particular amusement, 
my custom is to go just when I am moved, which is not 
very often, hut always in the best possible mood for en¬ 
joying it, viz. when out of sorts for anything else, and 
wanting a fillip. Then, if the weather he promising for 
walking there and back, or at least back—for a walk after 
a play is a positive luxury—I consult the papers for the 
Thespian bill of fare, and choose either something new, 
and said to be popular, or something that I may have seen 
before, and could see again with pleasure. I am usually 
early, and like to he at the pit door, with my hack against 
it, where a sort of prefatory dumb comedy is enjoyable in 
observing the people as they collect up. In that posture, 
what with watching their faces, and various demeanour, 
and their remarks, and, perhaps, occasionally exchanging 
a word or two with some who may be near you, and of the 
likely sort, the time passes much quicker than some of the 
impatient find, whose very impatience often, by its fid¬ 
getiness and peevish expression, tends to while away the 
time to those who are not so angry with the clock for 
going no faster. 

Before the doors of the theatre, therefore, for those who 
can find it, there is amusement not set down in the bills, 
and when those doors are open, and you rush to your seats, 
it is the same, and especially if you are brisk enough to 
get a forward place. Next the stalls (for in the changes 
which have come the worst part of the pit is allotted to 
the elite) is best in most cases ; but at the Haymarket, 
one of the prettiest and snuggest theatres in London, com¬ 
mend me to the fourth or fifth bench from the stalls. The 


220 


On Dramatic Entertainments. 


first and second from them let no man venture on who is 
not proof against a draught of wind from the opening right 
and left, and has no relish for rheumatism, bronchitis, or 
catarrh. 

Seated there in the fourth or fifth row, or in the first 
elsewhere, your enjoyment, if you be an amusable man, 
commences. In that case you will not be impatient for 
the rising of the curtain for seeing the actors, when, 
before it, there is a house full of actors—in one scene of 
the great drama of human life—a multitude met together 
for common enjoyment of a common pleasure. And, 
although they meet without any purpose of such commu¬ 
nity, and only for his or her own individual liking, yet 
will there be few of them but are more or less affected by 
the mere fact of a full house. The fact makes itself felt 
before the curtain rises, and continues afterwards, and the 
play will be received with very different sentiments by each 
to what it would if he were one of half a dozen specta¬ 
tors, even if the actors could present it with equal spirit. 

When the curtain rises, if it be a pregnant play, and 
the actors suitable, a high treat you have in the present¬ 
ment of the piece; and, if you have seen it frequently, as 
a good play will bear that, an additional and philosophic 
and human enjoyment is open to you by turning round 
and observing how certain passages that affect you are 
found to operate on the sea of human faces before you. 
In this you will have occasion to observe on two very dif¬ 
ferent matters, but alike illustrative of our nature, viz. 
how some passages and points will carry the whole of that 
mass imperiously along, without respect to difference of 
culture among them (those excepted, of course, who think 
it clever to resist the influence of whatever is presented to 
them) ; and, again, how other points will depend for their 
effect upon that very culture, and, consequently, take with 
some, be dead with others, and move a few, perhaps, in a 


On Dramatic Entertainments . 221 

diametrically opposite way to that in which you are affected. 
Of the last I had an instance in the play of “ The Un¬ 
equal Match.” The fainting scene, in which, to my mind, 
Miss Sedgwick showed consummate skill, and reached a 
real pathos, elicited a loud laugh from one or two women, 
apparently wives of operatives, a seat or two behind me, 
and who thoroughly enjoyed the play, and had expressed 
their pleasure frequently, but who mistook this for some¬ 
thing comic, and felt tickled. 

The difference was such as to set me thinking of the 
cause. It was scarcely in their nature, which seemed 
appreciative of other parts, and open to pathos, but rather, 
I should say, in their culture and mode of life. It was 
no natural insensibility to the dignity of ceremonial ob¬ 
servances, or want of largeness in making allowance for 
difference of manners that made that elaborate piece of 
court etiquette so trying to the gravity of our gracious 
Sovereign when the Siamese Ambassadors approached her 
on all-fours, and retired from the presence in the same 
posture, hacking out with their faces still towards her. 
The different sensations in the breast of each individual of 
the English Court and in that of these Siamese Chester¬ 
fields is due to the difference of culture and modes of life. 
This difference will probably account for the mistake of 
the women alluded to. In their class they seldom faint; 
and, on hearing of supposed infidelity of their husbands, 
would more probably be roused to angry pursuit of the 
offending parties, and, therefore, with sympathies no larger 
than their actual experience, they would individually as 
little realize the situation as our Court could the gravity of 
the Siamese all-fours ceremony. 

So much for the actors on the audience-side of the cur¬ 
tain. In the actors behind the foot-lights it is the business 
of the piece alone that amuses me. Deficiencies in the 
actors themselves, however ludicrous, give me absolute 


222 


On Dramatic Entertainments. 


pain, because one cannot forget that it is a feed-or-starve 
tiling with them, and too serious a matter for failure in 
it to amuse. Sometimes, however, instances occur that 
amuse without the drawback of having to reflect on the 
consequences to the performer. I was present at one such. 
The piece was “ As You Like It.” The part of Jacques 
was sustained by a competent actor, whose presentment 
would have been excellent but for the comicality of having 
to sustain the part also of the first lord ; not alternately 
lord and Jacques, but Jacque’s solely, with the lord’s part 
melted into it. So that the fine piece of declamation, in 
which Jacques is described in his absence, was seized on by 
Jacques himself, who presented the strangest figure in 
describing his own doings in terms only suitable in the 
mouth of a third person. The Duke, as a necessary con¬ 
sequence, addresses to Jacques, very inappropriately, what 
was pertinently said of him in his absence to the suppressed 
lord. But the climax of absurdity is reached when the 
Duke, speaking of the locality where the lord would have 
described Jacques as being at the very time of the dia¬ 
logue, addresses Jacques, altering the phrase to suit the 
droll occasion, with—“ Show me the place; I love to cope 
you in these sullen fits, for then you are full of matter.” 

Why not have coped him on the spot ? What stage 
exigencies may have prompted this unconscious burlesque 
I know not; but it is treating Shakespeare very badly, 
and reminds one of the grotesque and greedy versatility 
of Bottom that comes out so tellingly in his naive readi¬ 
ness to undertake any number of parts in the play. 


223 


xxxvi. 

HUMOUR IN ITS RELATION TO THE POET. 

IE word itself lias come to us from the old 
physicians, with whom, to take Burton’s defi¬ 
nition of it, “ Humour is a liquid or fluent 
part of the body, comprehended in it, for the 
preservation of it.” They referred each man’s idiosyncracy 
or constitution to the disposition of these fluids in his body 
or the predominance of one of them. And, as this differenced 
one individual from another, it came to mean character. 
So that a man’s humour expressed the ensemble of his 
qualities and temperament, that distinguished him from 
others. The early dramatists would seem to have worked 
this notion pretty hard, and indeed overworked it. And 
we see characters in their plays turning entirely on it, 
where the personage does and says things, with more or 
less of vivacity and eccentricity, hut of which no better 
account can be given than that it is his humour. O’est qu’il 
etait fait comme cela. The tendency was to the artificial 
and arbitrary and affected. 

Shakespeare, who mirrors every feature of his time, 
reflects this also, hut in his own sweet way. His dramatic 
instinct, that never failed him, felt that at bottom this was 
but a poor source to draw upon. Its essence is individuality 
linking, with no class, while dramatic power deals with 
individuals of class qualities. Unlike Ben Jonson, there¬ 
fore, in “ Every Man in his Humour,” Shakespeare was 
shy of working a whole play with such characters, though 
giving it a place in several of his plays. 






224 Humour in its Relation to the Poet . 


He would seem to have ridiculed the thing in its affected 
phase, by its ridiculous presentment in the person of 
Pistol; to have sneered at it through the cynical Shylock, 
when urged to explain his preference of the penalty of the 
bond to its payment— 

“ I’ll not answer that, 

But say it is my humour.” 

In the melancholy Jacques we have a humour played 
out to the full, and con amove on the poet’s part, who yet 
gives it pretty rebuke from Kosalind. Neither will he 
allow it advantage in presence of one of those humourists, 
that are especially Shakespeare’s delight, and which in their 
very essence were individual, and sui generis, the clowns. 
Jacques, who lectures everybody, is content to listen to and 
be instructed by Touchstone, 

In this idea of humour it is plain that mirth does not 
enter. It may be sad, or mirthful, or choleric, or, indeed, 
of any mood, but it must be sui generis and peculiar, not 
far removed from our notion of wilful, odd, and eccentric. 
There is another and more popular sense, expressive of a 
good-humoured and kindly faculty of seeing the laughable 
side of things. It is in this sense it is taken here, and 
the poet’s relation to it considered. 

The more a poet hath of what goes to make up the 
complete man the better poet he will be ; and, although 
he lack somewhat, he may not lack that which would be 
defect in the common run of men to want. A shrewd 
common-sense is among the indispensable ingredients of a 
great poet. The quality will not make him a poet, but 
he cannot be great in his art without it. The highest 
poets had it in perfection. You see it in Homer, you see 
it in Dante, you see it transcendency in Shakespeare, and 
you see it in Milton. 

There is another quality also, which, if not indispen¬ 
sable to the great poet, yet is the want of it a very serious 


225 


Humour in its Relation to the Poet. 

drawback on his working, viz. the one which is the subject 
of this essay, humour and a keen kindly sense of the ridi¬ 
culous. A sense of the ridiculous will not make a poet, 
and is rather one of those perilous gifts which prove fatal 
to a small nature, by creating a habit and a liking for taking 
everything by its wrong or ridiculous side, and ends in 
losing that reverence for the good, and the beautiful, and the 
true, in whatever form, without which no worthy work, 
poetic or otherwise, is possible. 

But, although this faculty be the plague of a small 
nature, it is the crown and finish of a noble one. It 
enables it to see a thing on all its sides, and not merely in 
the favourite aspect, and is but an ingredient of thorough 
insight. And in this world of good and bad, of mirth and 
tears, the master-worker must have his eyes open, and his 
soul must vibrate to every pulse of humanity, or he will be 
marred in delivering to men the reflex of themselves. A 
complete poet must have the faculty of seeing everything 
with the eyes of every class in the community to which he 
belongs. He must see everything as they see it from 
their point of view, though his conclusions concerning 
them may differ from and transcend theirs, nay, probably 
will, but yet, in some way, include or account for them, 
and so his composite presentment reflect back, and be 
accepted by them as the larger view, correcting some 
error or exaggeration in the particular of each. 

But, while the poet’s age is the circle which his capa¬ 
bilities are required to fill, it is also that which must cir¬ 
cumscribe his performance, whatever be his capabilities 
beyond. It is therefore no impeachment of the breadth 
and completeness of poetic nature in an ancient poet, that 
his poetry fails to indicate some quality that counts in the 
sum of poetic perfection, and which we find in a modern, 
if that quality be one of no prominence among the people 
the ancient poet addressed. Class qualities, and class 

Q 


226 Humour in its Relation to the Poet, 

apprehension were what the early poet of every nation had 
to deal with, and lie was consequently precluded from ob¬ 
truding what the many would not have relished, however 
prized by himself and a scattered few. We must not, 
therefore, infer absence of the quality, in such case, from 
absence of its expression. We must not, for example, sup¬ 
pose that Iiomer lacked wit or humour because of his 
poems giving no indication of them, but rather charge it 
upon his audience, who would have been indifferent to the 
liveliest exhibition of either. 

I say this because I am not prepared to put Homer’s 
claim to the quality on exhibited instances, and have failed 
to perceive h amour in all the cases that able writers have 
found in the Iliad and Odyssey. The tone of both poems 
has always appeared to me to have been too earnest and 
serious to admit of humour in some of the instances 
pointed out by Colonel Mure and others. I see, for 
instance, no persiflage in what Odysseus addresses to 
Alcinous. Occasional humour in both poems there 
certainly is, but, I think, restricted to the sudden occur¬ 
rence of something unexpected, and eccentric, as, for 
instance, the sudden assumption of the office of cup-bearer 
by the limping Hephaistus at the gods’ banquet, in the 
first book of the Iliad, and the sudden punishment of 
Thersites by Odysseus, in the second. But the ordinary, 
and normal course of life, however familiar, and in our eyes 
mean, is never, I think, a subject of jest or merriment in 
Iliad or Odyssey. Such modern merriment, indeed, as we 
can draw from the menial offices of life, could scarcely 
have been available, inasmuch as the poem was addressed 
to an audience composed of those who saw nothing risible 
in the matter, and who had to perform those offices them¬ 
selves, if of ordinary rank ; and, if not, were too liable, by 
vicissitude of war and violence, to be reduced to it for them 
to regard the topic in a mirthful light. And these offices, 


Humour in its Relation to the Poet. 227 

moreover, it was no disgrace, in those simple days, to 
perform, and only grew to hardship when they became 
compulsory and for another ; and then it was less a matter 
for mirth than commiseration. The Nemesis of the 
ancients was too generally dreaded for much unwholesome 
hilarity on such grounds. Hector, in that affecting pro¬ 
gnostic of the evils to which Andromache would be exposed 
at his death, instances, not her having to draw water, 
for that were no hardship, and she had probably often done 
so, but having to draw it “ unwillingly and on sore com¬ 
pulsion.” Waiting on one’s self, or family and friends, 
was no disgrace in those patriarchal times. Hence one 
element of the better condition of slaves in those days than 
in later times. They had to do what their masters and 
mistresses would not have considered derogatory to perform 
themselves. 

Another important element in ancient Greek life, at 
least in the patriarchal period to which the Homeric poems 
belong, and which must have lasted indefinitely down into 
the civilized ages of Greece, was the nature of their reli¬ 
gion. This, from its entering into all the details of ordi¬ 
nary life, gave every act a quasi religious character, and 
put it under divine sanction of one or other of the deities,. 
as in the case of the household gods. And, although it 
would be absurd to suppose them always acting under 
much more present conviction of their faith than we find 
ourselves doing in regard to our own, yet enough of it 
would operate to redeem those details from the ludicrous, 
and prevent them in the mass from relishing, or even per¬ 
ceiving the point of any jest that turned upon these. 
And to the mass, be it remembered, these, the most 
popular poems of antiquity, could alone have been ad¬ 
dressed ; men to whom Aristophanes would have been 
unintelligible, and Lucian simply profane. 

I feel that this is put at the lightest, and that it might 


228 Humour in its Relation to the Poet. 


be pushed further; but, even so far, these considerations 
should, methinks, suffice to prevent a modern reader from 
expecting anything like humour on topics where the per¬ 
sonages of the poem would be serious, however suggestive 
of merriment to our altered habits and notions. Society, 
in its early stages, I suspect, is always more prone to be 
grave than at an advanced and artificial state. Comedy, 
for example, of the genteel kind, turning upon incongrui¬ 
ties of manners, suppose a great social advance, for it sup¬ 
poses difference of manners appreciable by the audience ; 
and for that there must be settled and recognized differ¬ 
ence of classes, with mode and manner appropriate to 
each, as it is class absurdities alone that can be worked 
that way. Individual absurdity and eccentricity is the 
province of broad farce, and, among a rude people, its 
representation will prosper in proportion as it turns less on 
mental peculiarity than on extravagance capable of physical 
manifestation which every one can see before them. Our 
ancestors in the mass relished Rabelais, but few of them, 
probably, those parts which alone we relish now. Epic^ 
humour would be principally broad farce, broad as that 
which could be exhibited outside a booth in a fair. The 
limping of Vulcan, and his ludicrous mimicry of the graceful 
Hebe’s manner of handing the cup, moved the gods to 
inextinguishable laughter. The mirth of the Achseans at 
the putting down of the popular champion Thersites, who, 
be it remembered, had uttered but their own sentiments, 
was elicited by his tears and dismal face. If there be 
humour of other kind in Iliad or Odyssey I have failed to 
perceive it. 

One thing is worthy of note, that there is no wit in 
either poem. Why is this ? Hot from any notion of its 
being below the dignity of epic, for Homer was too 
Shakespearian for that. The reason of there being none 
is, that in the life that he was daguerreotyping he found 


Humour in its Relation to the Poet. 229 


but little. Sheridan’s comedies, that abound in repartee, 
would have small chance of success, or possibility of pro¬ 
duction, among a people in that stage of society. 

In the later stages, however, as society grows complex, 
some sense of the ludicrous is very needful to serious 
writers. From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. 
Those of this vein, therefore, had need take counsel with 
Momus, that he show them the points his followers are 
likely to seize ; and the higher minds are, for that matter, 
on the best terms with him. A keen sense of the ridi¬ 
culous was in Shakespeare; nor was the travelled Homer 
without it, so far as his age allowed, though his poems 
offered but little occasion for its display. The simplicity 
of early times gave not into subtle humour any more than 
childhood does. Humour supposes civilization, with much 
of the artificial and sophisticated. Where there is no 
humour in a people, it shows that they have not yet pushed 
in all directions of the human circle. Where there is no 
humour in an individual, under circumstances that do not 
inhibit it, it shows the like of the individual sphere, and 
is due either to defect in the individual, or to a partial 
direction of his energies so much on the earnest side as 
to be at disadvantage, in that particular, with a more 
balanced mind, or one that hath more balance in its direc¬ 
tion. Enormous power is, however, consistent with its 
absence, and a breadth to make us overlook the abatement 
consequent on the lack of it. Dante would appear to 
have been entirely without this faculty, and Milton almost. 

The opposite extreme is little or no sense of the se¬ 
rious. Both extremes are much more common than 
extremes usually are, and it is owing to the facility 
with which indulgence in either vein runs it up to enor¬ 
mous dimensions, maiming the individual to that extent, 
and withering what little susceptibility nature may have 
given him in the opposite direction. An earnest man, 



230 Humour in its lielation to the Poet. 


therefore, who hath this deficiency, and, rare concomi¬ 
tant, is aware of it, will do well, if he be writing a poem 
of compass, to submit it to a friend who hath a merry 
heart and ready wit, as well as a wise head, and will un¬ 
dertake the ticklish and somewhat thankless office s Watch 
the effect it hath on him, and take every stir of the risible 
muscles as a very Aristarchus in your case. Such invo¬ 
luntary criticism from a kindly man of that vein is worth 
much, and comes next to the author having himself the 
faculty of looking at the mirthful side of his earnest la¬ 
bours. For the best and most complete tragedy will he 
written hut by him who could, at a pinch, inimitably parody 
his own work. This may seem strange doctrine and 
uncouth counsel, hut the counsel is good and the doctrine 
sound; and, on reflection, any man will feel it to be so ; 
for surely that is best seen which is seen on all sides of it; 
and how few things in this April-world of ours, with its 
sunshine and tears, but have their ludicrous as well as their 
solemn side ! But a fool, although he be a merry one, will 
not answer this critical purpose. The crackling thorns of 
such a one’s laughter were utterly valueless, resulting but 
in explosion and smoke. 


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Now Ready. 

White’s Natural History of Selborne. 

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Coleridge’s Poems. 2s. 6 d. 

The Robin Hood Ballads. 2s. 6 d. 

The Midshipman. By Capt. Basil 
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The Lieutenant and Commander. By 
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Southey’s Life of Nelson. 2s. 6a„ 

George Herbert’s Poems. 2s. 

George Herbert’s Works. 3s. 

Longfellow’s Poems. 2s. 6fZ. 

Lamb’sTales from Shakspeare. 2s. 6d. 

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